The disruptions to the binary systems could be the key to detecting the intriguing dark matter. Researchers noticed that they wreak havoc on binary stars.
Disruptions in Binary Systems Could Be Key to Finding Dark Matter
According to a new study, massive clusters of unseen dark matter roaming the cosmos may be slowly destroying binary stars. Thanks to those powerful effects, the exact nature of the most elusive entity in the universe may become clearer.
Astronomers have gathered a vast quantity of data over the years that suggests dark matter, an unseen type of stuff, exists and makes up around 85% of the mass in almost all galaxies. At first, scientists believed dark matter to be a novel class of particles called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which would only interact with one another via the weak nuclear force and gravity.
However, studies meant to detect the trace signals of WIMPs as they pass past Earth have not detected any evidence, and the WIMP hypothesis needs some help explaining the concentrations of matter found in galactic cores. Because of this, researchers are increasingly pursuing a different scenario in which the dark matter particle is incredibly light, even lighter than the neutrino, the lightest particle currently known.
The dark matter particle in these versions would weigh almost a billion times less than an electron. Furthermore, quantum physics tells us that every particle has a wave-like quality that is typically only detectable in subatomic tests.
However, in this scenario, the dark matter would behave more like a wave at scales comparable to or greater than the solar system because it would be so light. A Chinese team of astronomers has investigated this idea and explored potential observational avenues for detecting this type of dark matter.
Dark matter with ultralight properties wouldn't whirr like tiny projectiles across space. Instead, it would slosh like a vast, unseen ocean encircling every galaxy. Furthermore, the bath of lightweight dark matter would exhibit oscillations, just as oceans may sustain waves. Some of these waves can bundle together to form a soliton, a single group that travels in an interdependent manner while keeping its shape.
Like enormous, rogue waves sweeping over the galaxy, but composed of stuff so light that they would hardly make an impression on their surroundings, these solitons would be undetectable. However, the enormous size of the solitons may slightly change the gravitational environment surrounding them, as the scientists behind the latest study found.
The solitons' gravitational pull would be so negligible that it would not affect nearly anything in the galaxy. However, the mutual gravity between wide-separated binary pairs of stars holds them together very weakly; thus, the solitons would be large enough to change their orbits.
In the Gaia catalog of the billion stars nearest to the sun, the researchers found every broad binary pair and marked them for further study. Should the binary stars begin to move apart, it might be attributed to solitons' impact.
The researchers discovered that by observing the evolution of binary stars, we could have an extremely sensitive probe of ultralight dark matter, possibly even more sensitive than any laboratory built to find this type of dark matter. So, if something odd appears to be occurring to binary stars, we may get our first hint about the nature of dark matter.
Square Kilometer Array Telescope Could Potentially Answer Dark Matter Questions
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world's largest radio telescope. It is being built between Australia and South Africa. Thus, locating and using the 21-cm forest in the near future could be feasible.
As long as cosmic heating isn't too strong at cosmic dawn, scientists should be able to restrict the mass of dark matter particles and gas temperature using the low-frequency capabilities of SKA's phase 1 operations. If cosmic heating were too great, the second phase of the SKA would involve expanding the device and using many background radio sources to give the same restrictions.
The next stage of this research is to hunt for more radio-bright sources at the cosmic dawn, such as radio-loud quasars and the gamma-ray burst afterglow, since observations of high-redshift background radio sources are necessary for the possible use of the 21-cm forest as a dark matter probe.
Once SKA begins scanning the universe in 2027, astronomers can investigate these sources further, providing additional light on the riddles surrounding dark matter and the origins of galaxies.
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