Theory Posits Early Stars Powered By Dark Matter

ethericalzen writes "A BBC article highlights a theory that the first stars may have been powered by dark matter. A group of US scientists published a paper in Physical Review Letters speculating that, unlike the stars of today, which are powered by nuclear fusion, early stars might have been powered by the abundant dark matter crowding the universe after the Big Bang. The theory suggests that these stars would have collided and destroyed one another before nuclear fusion had a chance take hold." The BBC perhaps overstates the certainty with which the dark-matter theory is held, and doesn't mention that the postulated properties of such particles are completely speculative.

Comments

Overstates?

[moderatorrater]

How do you overstate the certainty of dark matter? Last I read, the only serious alternatives were that there's more interstellar dust than we thought (improbable considering the observations of the bending of light), modifications to the theory of gravity (few supporters, unlikely, especially with said observations), and string theory.

Re:Overstates?

[shma]

Other alternatives being explored generally rely on alternatives to General Relativity (for instance, TeVeS) to describe results that are attributed to dark matter. I was actually at a day of seminars at the Perimeter Institute last fall where Katherine Freese gave a talk on this subject. The next speaker was actually talking about alternatives to GR and offered an interesting analogy. Early on, when astronomers were still mapping out the solar system, they noticed that Uranus' orbit did not conform to what was predicted by Newtonian gravity. As a result, they predicted a 'dark' body farther out who's orbit was influencing Uranus. This turned out to be Neptune. On the other hand, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, which was also believed initially to have been caused by an unseen planet (which they called Vulcan), was found to be the result of the failure of Newtonian gravity, and is now seen as confirmation of General Relativity. He concluded that both avenues of enquiry are valid and should both be followed.

Dark matter is an optimization?

[BLAG-blast]

If this was a simulation, would you simulate very atom? Or would you bulk compute matter that was less important, until it became important then simulate every atom?

Could dark matter, or matter we have trouble seeing, be the equivalent of hiding polygons which don't need to be rendered in a 3D scene?

Geez, I hope not. Quick, prove me wrong.