Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – A new Johns Hopkins University study suggests dark matter may have existed before the big bang.
The study presents a new idea of how dark matter was created and how it might be identified during astronomical observations.
“The study revealed a new connection between particle physics and astronomy,” says Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral fellow in JHU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the study’s author, said in a press release.
“If dark matter consists of new particles that were born before the big bang, they affect the way galaxies are distributed in the sky in a unique way. This connection may be used to reveal their identity and make conclusions about the times before the big bang, too.”
For a long time, researchers believed that dark matter must be a byproduct of the big bang. Scientists have long sought this kind of dark matter, but so far all experimental searches have been unsuccessful.
“If dark matter were truly a remnant of the big bang, then in many cases researchers should have seen a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments already,” Tenkanen says.
This new study shows that dark matter may have been produced before the big bang during an era known as the cosmic inflation when space was expanding very rapidly. The rapid expansion is believed to lead to copious production of certain types of particles called scalars. So far, only one scalar particle has been discovered, the famous Higgs boson.
“We do not know what dark matter is, but if it has anything to do with any scalar particles, it may be older than the big bang,” Tenkanen explains.
“With the proposed mathematical scenario, we don’t have to assume new types of interactions between visible and dark matter beyond gravity, which we already know is there.”
While the idea that dark matter existed before the big bang is not new, other theorists have not been able to come up with calculations that support the idea. The new study shows that researchers have always overlooked the simplest possible mathematical scenario for dark matter’s origins, he says.
The study also suggests a way to test the origin of dark matter by observing the signatures dark matter leaves on the distribution of matter in the universe.
“While this type of dark matter is too elusive to be found in particle experiments, it can reveal its presence in astronomical observations,” Tenkanen says.
The Euclid satellite is launched in 2022 and it probably reveal about dark matter.
Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff