(ORDO NEWS) — Despite the fact that, according to scientists, there is a lot of dark matter in the Universe, it is still an extremely difficult task to identify it.
Thanks to the new method, scientists will be able to detect “shock waves” arising from the collision of dark matter asteroids with stars.
Why is dark matter so hard to detect?
A common hypothesis is that dark matter does not reflect, absorb, or emit light, which is why it is so difficult to detect.
However, scientists are confident that it interacts with light and ordinary matter due to the forces of gravity so much that such matter affects the movement of stars and other space objects.
According to some estimates, there is five times more dark matter in the universe than ordinary matter.
According to a new study by the National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC (USA) and the University of Paris-Suclay, when passing through stars, dark matter can cause bursts of unique signals that can be observed in conventional telescopes.
Interesting! Most of the parameters of dark matter are unknown, but scientists in the framework of the study intend to focus on objects that are approximately equivalent in mass to asteroids.
Scientists say that earlier, many researchers were looking for either individual particles with a mass equivalent to the mass of atomic nuclei, or a cluster with a mass of a planet or star. In the new work, attention is paid to objects of intermediate mass, equivalent to the mass of an asteroid.
Previously, such objects were thought to be difficult to study because they are too rare to hit the Earth and too small to be seen in space.
How to detect “asteroids” from dark matter
If such asteroids really exist, they must pass through astronomical objects from time to time, revealing themselves.
The research team believes that when asteroids pass through the stars at high speed, a kind of “shock wave” is formed . Reaching the surface of a star, it causes a short flash in the visible, ultraviolet and X-ray ranges, which can be seen with telescopes.
In this case, the signals will be very similar to ordinary flares on the Sun or other stars. Scientists have found a way out – you should observe the luminaries with low-intensity UV radiation, like orange dwarfs and those located in globular clusters, where there are likely to be large concentrations of dark matter.
This makes it easier to see the burst of “signals”. Scientists believe that telescopes can register such flashes. At the same time, there is no need to specifically hunt for signals – they can be detected when analyzing ordinary images.
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