Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2019 Oct 03
Scientists simulate early galaxy formation in a universe of dark matter that is ultralight, or “fuzzy,” rather than cold or warm.
Dark matter was likely the starting ingredient for brewing up the very first galaxies in the universe. Shortly after the Big Bang, particles of dark matter would have clumped together in gravitational “halos,” pulling surrounding gas into their cores, which over time cooled and condensed into the first galaxies.
Although dark matter is considered the backbone to the structure of the universe, scientists know very little about its nature, as the particles have so far evaded detection.
Now scientists at MIT, Princeton University, and Cambridge University have found that the early universe, and the very first galaxies, would have looked very different depending on the nature of dark matter. For the first time, the team has simulated what early galaxy formation would have looked like if dark matter were “fuzzy,” rather than cold or warm.
In the most widely accepted scenario, dark matter is cold, made up of slow-moving particles that, aside from gravitational effects, have no interaction with ordinary matter. Warm dark matter is thought to be a slightly lighter and faster version of cold dark matter. And fuzzy dark matter, a relatively new concept, is something entirely different, consisting of ultralight particles, each about 1 octillionth (10-27) the mass of an electron (a cold dark matter particle is far heavier — about 105 times more massive than an electron). ...
First Star-Forming Structures in Fuzzy Cosmic Filaments ~ Philip Mocz et al
- Physical Review Letters 123(14):1301 (2019 Oct 02) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.141301