Ok, I admit it … I had to go to Wiki <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter> and read up on dark matter. Since nobody ever found any, I thought it best to start there to see what we at least think it is … if it is.
They say it doesn’t emit light, doesn’t absorb light, you can’t see it with a telescope, it doesn’t give off or absorb radiation and so far has never been detected that we know of.
But it accounts for a very large portion of matter that scientists think should be in the universe, but simply isn’t.
Given that, this next article then becomes all the more surprising – we may have known about dark matter all along? Could it really be a particle we’ve known and studied since the 1930’s, almost 85 years ago?
Well that’s the theory and it’s well worth the read …
Artist’s impression of dark matter distribution. Left image assumes conventional dark matter theories, where dark matter would be highly peaked in small area in galaxy center. Right image assumes SIMPs, where dark matter in galaxy would spread out from the center. (Original credit: NASA, STScI; Credit: Kavli IPMU – Kavli IPMU modified this figure based on the image credited by NASA, STScI)
Déjà-vu, new theory says dark matter acts like well-known particle
July 22, 2015
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU)
A new theory says dark matter acts remarkably similar to subatomic particles known to science since the 1930s.
…… Now an international group of researchers has proposed a theory that dark matter is very similar to pions, which are responsible for binding atomic nuclei together. Their findings appear in the latest Physical Review Letters, published on July 10.
…… The new theory predicts dark matter is likely to interact with itself within galaxies or clusters of galaxies, possibly modifying the predicted mass distributions. “It can resolve outstanding discrepancies between data and computer simulations,” says Eric Kuflik, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University. University of California, Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Yonit Hochberg adds, “The key differences in these properties between this new class of dark matter theories and previous ideas have profound implications on how dark matter can be discovered in upcoming experimental searches.”
The next step will be to put this theory to the test using experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider and the new SuperKEK-B, and a proposed experiment SHiP.
Authors: University of California Berkeley researcher Yonit Hochberg, Cornell University researcher Eric Kuflik, Kavli IPMU director Hitoshi Murayama, Tel Aviv University Professor Tomer Volansky, and Quora scientist and Stanford University consulting professor Jay Wacker.
Source: Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU)
