by: Jason Major But WIMPs of certain masses can collide with atomic nuclei on occasion—and now it appears such collisions might happen more often than previously thought. “Before we did this work, I thought a WIMP collided with one of your nuclei once in your lifetime,” said Katherine Freese, a professor with the Michigan Center […]
by: Skylar Bergl Ninety-six percent of the universe is unknown to humans—scientists can see the effects of dark matter and dark energy, but not directly detect either one. Last night at the World Science Festival in New York, some of the most interesting minds studying these puzzling phenomena gathered to discuss how they’re trying to […]
by: Katherine Freese For twenty five years I’ve been working on the “dark matter problem”—the question of what makes up roughly 90% of the mass of our Milky Way galaxy as well as every other galaxy. This past week saw intriguing new experimental results that may be telling us something profound about this question.
by: Eugenie Samuel Reich Is dark matter lurking at the centre of our bright sun? Yes, say two research groups who believe the elusive stuff is cooling the solar core.
page 26, by: Ker Than Bizarre stars powered by dark matter may have been the first to form after the Big Bang. (Click here to download the publication as an Adobe PDF file)
by: Charles Q. Choi Massive black holes should not have existed in a universe less than one billion years old, yet they did. (Click here to download the publication as an Adobe PDF file)
by: Ian O’Neill Although it’s believed the first stars (known as “Population III stars”) were sparked when hydrogen and helium gases cooled enough to clump together, collapsing under gravity and initiating nuclear fusion in the star cores (thus generating heavier elements), there’s another possibility.
page 92, par: Mathieu Grousson – Mars Faute de pouvoir être observées directement, les étoiles primitives demeurent une énigme pour les scientifiques. Aussi, le scenario de leur formation repose-t-il sur celui des étoiles connues, où la mystérieuse matière noire tient un faible role. Or, voilà qu’une astrophysicienne américaine émet une hypothèse audacieuse: la matière noire […]
by: Charles Q. Choi These “dark stars,” first born nearly 13 billion years ago, might still exist today. Although they would not shed any visible light, astronomers might detect these invisible giants ? some 400 to 200,000 times wider than our sun and 500 to 1,000 times more massive ? because they should spew gamma […]
by: David Shiga Some physicists speculate that minuscule black holes may have been forged in the very dense soup of matter and radiation that prevailed in the first moments of the universe’s existence. If so, these might account for at least some of the invisible dark matter that pervades the universe.