PhysOrg: Dark matter could transfer energy in the Sun

[bystander]

Dark matter could transfer energy in the Sun
PhysOrg | General Physics | 01 Dec 2010

Researchers from the Institute for Corpuscular Physics (IFIC) and other European groups have studied the effects of the presence of dark matter in the Sun. According to their calculations, low mass dark matter particles could be transferring energy from the core to the external parts of the Sun, which would affect the quantity of neutrinos that reach the Earth.

This is the Sun, picked up from the space telescope Hinode X-ray. [i](Credit: Hinode JAXA/NASA/PPARC)[/i]

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"We assume that the dark matter particles interact weakly with the Sun's atoms, and what we have done is calculate at what level these interactions can occur, in order to better describe the structure and evolution of the Sun", Marco Taoso, researcher at the IFIC, a combined centre of the Spanish National Research Council and the University of Valencia, explains to SINC.

The astrophysical observations suggest that our galaxy is situated in a halo of dark matter particles. According to the models, some of these particles, the WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) interact weakly with other normal ones, such as atoms, and could be building up on the inside of stars. The study, recently published in the journal Physical Review D, carries out an in-depth study of the case of the Sun in particular.

"When the WIMPs pass through the Sun they can break up the atoms of our star and lose energy. This prevents them from escaping the gravitational force of the Sun which captures them, and they become trapped, orbiting inside it, with no way of escaping", the researcher points out.

The dark matter cools down the Sun's core

Scientists believe that the majority of the dark matter particles gather together in the centre of the Sun, but in their elliptic orbits they also travel to the outer part, interacting and exchanging with the solar atoms. In this way, the WIMPs transport the energy from the burning central core to the cooler peripheral parts.

"This effect produces a cooling down of the core, the region from where the neutrinos originate due to the nuclear reactions of the Sun", Taoso points out. "And this corresponds to a reduction in the flux of solar neutrinos, since these depend greatly on the temperature of the core".

Effect of low mass dark matter particles on the Sun - M Taoso et al

• Physical Review D 82(8) 083509 (08 Oct 2010) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.083509
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1005.5711 > 31 May 2010 (v1), 07 Sep 2010 (v2)