Instead of WIMPS or axions, dark matter may be made of macroscopic objects as small as a few ounces up to the size of a good asteroid, and probably as dense as a neutron star or the nucleus of an atom, researchers suggest.
The physics community has spent three decades searching for and finding no evidence that dark matter is made of tiny exotic particles. Case Western Reserve University theoretical physicists suggest researchers consider looking for candidates more in the ordinary realm and, well, more massive.
Dark matter is unseen matter, that, combined with normal matter, could create the gravity that, among other things, prevents spinning galaxies from flying apart. Physicists calculate that dark matter comprises 27 percent of the universe; normal matter 5 percent.
Instead of WIMPS, weakly interacting massive particles, or axions, which are weakly interacting low-mass particles, dark matter may be made of macroscopic objects, anywhere from a few ounces to the size of a good asteroid, and probably as dense as a neutron star, or the nucleus of an atom, the researchers suggest.Physics professor
Glenn Starkman and David Jacobs, who received his PhD in Physics from CWRU in May and is now a fellow at the University of Cape Town, say published observations provide guidance, limiting where to look.
In the wake of wiping out most customary matter, including fizzled Jupiters, white midgets, neutron stars, stellar dark gaps, the dark openings in focuses of systems and neutrinos with a great deal of mass, as would be prudent competitors, physicists turned their concentrate on the exotics.
Matter that was some place in the middle of standard and extraordinary – relatives of neutron stars or vast cores – was left on the table, Starkman said. “We say relatives in light of the fact that they most likely have a significant admixture of unusual quarks, which are made in quickening agents and usually have to a great degree short lives,” he said.
Albeit odd quarks are profoundly precarious, Starkman calls attention to that neutrons are likewise exceedingly temperamental. Yet in helium, bound with stable protons, neutrons stay stable.
“That opens the likelihood that stable unusual atomic matter was made in the early universe and dull matter is simply pieces of odd atomic matter or other bound conditions of quarks, or of baryons, which are themselves made of quarks,” he said. Such dim matter would fit the Standard Model.
The Macros would need to be collected from normal and bizarre quarks or baryons before the unusual quarks or baryons rot, and at a temperature over 3.5 trillion degrees Celsius, tantamount to the temperature in the inside of a monstrous supernova, Starkman and Jacobs figured. The quarks would need to be amassed with 90 percent proficiency, leaving only 10 percent to structure the protons and neutrons found in the universe today.
The points of confinement of the conceivable dull matter are as per the following:
At least 55 grams. In the event that dim matter were more modest, it would have been seen in locators in Skylab or in tracks found in sheets of mica.
In the scope of 109 to 1018, dull matter would impact Earth once yearly, giving nothing to the underground dim matter finders set up.
A most extreme of 1024 (a million billion) grams. Over this, the Macros would be so enormous they would twist starlight, which has not been seen.
The scope of 1017 to 1020 grams for every centimeter squared ought to additionally be wiped out from the hunt, the scholars say. Dim matter in that range would be gigantic for gravitational lensing to influence singular photons from gamma beam barges in ways that have not been seen.
On the off chance that dim matter is inside this permitted extent, there are reasons it hasn’t been seen.
At the mass of 1018 grams, dim matter Macros would hit Earth about once like clockwork.