A dark matter could lie in the hearts of large exoplanets (artist’s view).
ESO / M. Kornmesser / Nick Risinger
By Adrian Cho
A dark matter may be raising the temperature of planets outside our Solar System, a pair of physics predicts. Space telescopes already in the works should be able to see the impact, they say, that could allow scientists to discover how the secret material encased inside our Galaxy Milky Way.
“In science, we rarely come up with an innovative idea,” said Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who was not involved in the work. “So I think it’s good to see this intersection of dark matter and exoplanets.”
For decades, astronomers have believed that invisible dark matter must cover every galaxy, just as glass surrounds the colored pool in the center of marble. The heaviness of a dark subject is needed to explain why stars in fast-spinning galaxies do not fly into space.
Physicists assume that the material contains some kind of basic grains coming out of the big bang. But so far, all the evidence for a dark matter comes from its distracting effects, as searches for dark matter grains go around and interact with a normal subject in other ways. to emerge.
Instead some astronauts have studied the skies for indirect signs of dark matter grains. Many theories say that when a pair of grains collide, they should disintegrate to form normal visible particles. For example, researchers have seen signs of a mysterious cry in the center of our galaxy, where a dark matter should be more dense. But they debate whether it comes from a dark matter or more prosaic sources like neutron stars.
Now, Rebecca Leane, a theoretical physicist at MIT, and Juri Smirnov, an astroparticle physicist at Ohio State University (OSU), are proposing the use of exoplanets as dark matter detectors. Drawn by gravity, dark grains may settle into the planets. There, they may disintegrate to produce enough heat to raise the temperature of the planets, the team measures in paper in a press at Corporate Review Letters.
Others have suggested that dark matter may accumulate in large warm groups, such as neutron stars. In fact, a 2007 study used data from the Earth to remove grains of dark matter above a given mass. But exoplanets should make excellent targets for such investigations for one reason or another, Leane, now at SLAC National Acceleration Laboratory, explains. First, they can be much larger than the planets in our Solar System, so they should accumulate more dark matter and capture darker particles of dark matter. Second, they are much more numerous and easier to see than neutron stars. Our Milky Way Galaxy should teem with 300 billion exoplanets, the researchers estimate.
Just no exoplanet will do, though. To reflect relatively little warming from a dark matter, a planet needs to be cooled from birth to fire. So it has to be several billion years old. And he has to move far from the heat of his own star. “You don’t want to find a candle in a forest fire,” Smirnov says. The particular targets would be deceptive planets that have escaped from their stars or failed stars called brown dwarfs, both of which can be seen as their gravity moves images of stars farther away.
Dark matter riots could raise planet temperature 14 times as much as Jupiter from 250 K to 500 K or more, the researchers estimate. More dark matter should accumulate in planets closer to the center of the constellation, where the density of dark matter is highest. So, Leane says, astronomers may be looking for the temperatures of the coldest planets to rise closer to the center. “If we see this signature, it would be a smoking gun for a dark matter.”
There are some cubes. Even though scientists see warming, the sign does not provide a measure of the mass of the dark matter and other properties. The scheme also acknowledges that the dark matter grains don’t need many billions of years to settle into the planets, notes Chris Kouvaris, an astroparticle physicist at Athens National Technical University, who has studied on dark matter accumulation in neutrons much larger stars. That is an assumption that needs to be investigated, he says.
Nevertheless, Leane and Smirnov say, the data for such a study is likely to be collected by space telescopes already in development. In particular, NASA’s Nancy Nancy Space Telescope (formerly known as WFIRST), launched in 2025, and the James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch later this year , looking for planets like that. “We will definitely be hunting fake planets with WFIRST,” Seager says.
The exoplanet study would contribute to ground searches for fragments of dark matter, said John Beacom, a theoretical psychologist at OSU. Underground detectors can only detect dark matter grains with masses larger than a proton, he says, but the exoplanet study would detect particles with as little as 1/1000th of that mass, he estimates. say. “This allows us to study the properties of dark matter in ways that we cannot study on Earth.”