JHU: Dark Matter May Be Older Than the Big Bang
Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:53 pm
Dark Matter May Be Older Than the Big Bang
Johns Hopkins University | 2019 Aug 08
Dark Matter from Scalar Field Fluctuations ~ Tommi Tenkanen
Johns Hopkins University | 2019 Aug 08
Dark matter, which researchers believe make up about 80% of the universe’s mass, is one of the most elusive mysteries in modern physics. What exactly it is and how it came to be is a mystery, but a new Johns Hopkins University study now suggests that dark matter may have existed before the Big Bang. ...
“The study revealed a new connection between particle physics and astronomy. 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,” says Tommi Tenkanen ...
For a long time, researchers believed that dark matter must be a leftover substance from the Big Bang. Researchers 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,” says Tenkanen.
Using a new, simple mathematical framework, the 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. ...
Dark Matter from Scalar Field Fluctuations ~ Tommi Tenkanen
- Physical Review Letters 123(6):1302 (09 Aug 2019) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.061302
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1905.01214 > 03 May 2019 (v1), 06 Aug 2019 (v2)