This cosmic scavenger hunt just got even wilder.
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For centuries, scientists have been hunting for an invisible glue that many believe holds our cosmos together. They have yet to observe this “dark matter,” but there are convincing signs it exists; the effects of the gravity it creates on nearby objects can be observed, for example. Learning more could be the key to solving the deepest mysteries of the universe.
And astronomers may have just unlocked a valuable clue that could help them, finally, observe the material. Most scientists theorize that dark matter comprises roughly 85 percent of the matter in the universe, but scientists believe that it’s made of stuff invisible to our telescopes. Another reason it’s hard to observe, some scientists believe, is that the mysterious substance could be what they call “collisionless,” meaning its particles interact with each other and other material indirectly.
However, a recent study published in Physical Review Letters is turning that assumption on its head. The study authors propose a new type of dark matter that they claim could be “self-interacting.” Unlike the traditional conception of dark matter, these particles would not only interact with each other, but also other material around them.
In everyday human terms, self-interacting dark matter behaves like a crowd of people who deliberately bump into each other instead of quietly avoiding others in the group, says Hai-Bo Yu, PhD, a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, who was one of the study’s authors. Rather than being made of collision-free and “cold” (or slow-moving) material, Yu’s research suggests that self-interacting dark matter could explain some kinds of structures we do see with telescopes.
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