In a recently-published study, the University of Cambridge researchers suggested that some unexplained findings from what they called the XENON1T experiment conducted in Italy may have resulted from dark energy rather than the dark matter; this said investigation was originally designed to identify.
The study investigators built a physical model to help explain results, which may have been coined from dark energy particles generated in an area of the Sun along with strong magnetic fields, even though future investigations will be needed to verify such an explanation.
The study authors said their research could be an essential step toward dark energy's direct detection. A Phys.org report said that everything the eyes can see in the skies and the everyday world, from tiny moons to gigantic galaxies, from ants to whales, makes up smaller than five percent of the universe.
What's remaining is dark. Specifically, 27 percent is dark matter, the hidden or unseen force that holds galaxies and the cosmic web together, whereas 68 percent is dark energy, causing the universe to expand at a fast-tracked rate.
Discovery of Dark Energy
According to Cambridge's Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Dr. Sunny Vagnozzi, the first author of the paper, despite the invisibility of both components, there's a lot known about the dark matter since it existed was suggested as early as the 1920s, whereas dark energy was not detected until 1998.
The first author added, large-scale experiments such as XENON1T have been designed for the direct detection of dark matter by looking for signs of dark matter "hitting" ordinary matter, although dark energy is even more indefinable.
As specified in the study published in Physical Review D, to discover dark energy, the researchers looked for gravitational interactions in general; the way gravity is pulling objects around.
More so, on a large scale, such gravitational impact of dark energy is repulsive, pulling things away from each other and making the expansion of the universe accelerate.
XENON1T Experiment
Last year, the XENON1T experiment reported an unforeseen signal indicator, or excess, over the expected.
About a year ago, the XENON1T experiment reported an unexpected signal, or excess, over the predictable background.
According to researcher Dr. Luca Visinelli from the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy, the sorts of excesses are frequently flukes, although some in a while, they can lead to fundamental detections, as well.
Visinelli, also the study's co-author said, they explored a model in which such a signal could be attributable to dark energy instead of the dark matter the experiment was originally developed to identify.
During that time, the most prominent explanation was the excess hypothetical, extremely light particles known as axions produced in the Sun.
Nevertheless, the explanation is not standing up to observations since the extent of axions needed to explain the XENON1T signal would radically change the stars' evolution much heavier than the Sun, conflicting with what has been observed.
'Chameleon Screening'
Vagnozzi, together with his co-authors, developed a physical model, which used a screening mechanism type also known as chameleon screening, to present that dark energy particles produced the strong magnetic fields of the Sun could explain the XENON1T excess.
Explaining their findings, Vagnozzi said their chameleon screening shuts down the dark energy particles' product in very dense objects, preventing the problems the solar axions faced.
He added, it allows them as well to decouple what happens in the local very dense Universe from what happens on the hugest scales, where there is extremely low density.
It was really surprising, sad Vagnozzi, that such excess could, in principle, have resulted from dark energy instead of dark matter.
Related information about dark energy is shown on the University of California Television's YouTube video below:
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