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A NASA illustration of a “star made of dark matter”. | Photo credits: NASA/JPL-CALTECH
Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who you are? not See? The sky could be full of invisible “Boson stars”, which consist of an exotic form of matter that does not shine.
We strongly suspect that the universe is full of it dark matterthat is about 25 % of the total mass and energy in the cosmos. But although there are many evidence of evidence and we believe that dark matter is a kind of undiscovered particle, we have no direct evidence of such a particle.
For a few decades, we believed that with a new kind of particle, the so -called weakly interacting massive particle (WImp), we believed that we were on the right track. Different super-symmetry theories predict that the WIMP would have a mass that is somewhere in the area of the heavier known particles, such as the roundabout quark. Otherwise, however, it would be largely invisible and would only occasionally interact with normal matter.
But Nothing was found in the search for wimps. That’s okay; Nature is never obliged to follow our first assumption. Fortunately we have another particle candidate in the starting blocks: that Axion.
The axion was introduced to solve an unpleasant problem Strong nuclear power. According to all observations, strong strength obey two important symmetries in nature: cargo and parity. This means that if you take on a strong change in strength, turn the charges of all particles to their opposite values and look at the reaction in the mirror, you get the same result.
But nothing in theory itself says that it should obey these symmetries. Physicists tried to remedy this by essentially adding a new parameter to the equations and put this parameter to zero, but that felt a little forced. Then came a brilliant solution: Perhaps this new parameter represented a new quantum field, and interactions with this field naturally created symmetry.
This was the axion, so named after a dishwashing detergent brand, because it removed the chaos of the symmetry problem.
If there were axions, they would be an excellent dark matter because they would be plenty of and hardly, if at all, interact with normal matter. And they would also do some wild things.
Axions are incredibly light – trillions and millions of times easier than even axions neutrinoThe lightest known particle. With such low masses, their quantum wave jet is manifested on macroscopic scales. Although a wave is also connected to each particle, we usually do not notice these waves and do not take care of it, unless it is subatomar quantum systems. This is not the case with axion, since it may be able to spread its wavelength over a whole galaxy.
The second cool thing about axions is that they are Bosons. Bosons are a kind of particle that can all have the same quantum state, which means that you can stuff as many of them into a compact volume as you want. This is similar to photons (you can put as much light in a box as you want) and differs from particles Electrons (You can only stuff as many until the box is full.)
These two properties of axions mean that they are exceptionally good to collapse on incredibly high density, drawn together by their (light) Gravity. Basically, you can form a kind of star. It is completely invisible, does not radiate light and interacts with nothing, but is still a star.
This Stars – that have different names, including axion stars, Boson stars and dark stars – can be small and have about the same mass as normal, everyday stars. They can also be huge and include an entire galactic core.
The possible existence of Boson stars is a double -edged sword. On the one hand, it can make direct recognition extremely difficult. Unless a Bosonen star hikes through our solar system and the earth happens, it is unlikely that we will see axions in our detectors.
Related stories:
“Axion stars” that were booming after the Big Bang could throw light on dark matter
—Athable star system could contain first indications of an extremely rare “star made of dark matter”
—Exist the legendary “dark stars”? The James WebB World Corporation Telescope is discovering three candidates
On the other hand, Bosonen stars can do all kinds of things that could make them demonstrably, such as disturbing the nuclear fusion in star nuclei or exploding itself in an event known as Bosenova.
We do not know whether there are axions or whether they are responsible for the dark matter. But it is still fun to imagine a universe full of quiet, invisible and harmless dark stars.
