X-rays From Other Galaxies Could Emanate From Particles of Dark Matter

sciencehabit writes "X-rays of a specific wavelength emanating from the hearts of nearby galaxies and galaxy clusters could be signs of particles of dark matter decaying in space, two independent teams of astronomers report (first study, second study). If that interpretation is correct, then dark matter could consist of strange particles called sterile neutrinos that weigh about 1/100 as much as an electron."

Comments

That's "strange weird" not "strange flavor"

[jfengel]

It took me a second to figure that out. Neutrinos don't participate in the strong force and don't have any flavor. (The names are charming, but kind of annoyingly ambiguous out of context.)

They sure are strange-weird if they don't even participate in the weak force, as other neutrinos do. They're barely there at all (if they ARE there at all).

Re:That's "strange weird" not "strange flavor"

[marcosdumay]

I can't wait until the entire English vocabulary has a different meaning in subatomic physics. Things were better when the names were made-up.

Well, now on topic, we'd expect that any dark matter candidate is barely there at all, wouldn't we? The only problem (for me, certainly, no the theory) is that I don't understand how something with only 7kEv * c^2 of mass won't be seen already. Even if it shares no property with normal matter, I'd expect it to appear from bare energy + momentum available at accelerators*... Or are people just classifying them as normal neutrinos?

* I mean, would it be 10^-29 times as probable as a normal neutrino? Even if so, wouldn't people have seen a bunch of them?

Re:That's "strange weird" not "strange flavor"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand how something with only 7kEv * c^2 of mass won't be seen already. Even if it shares no property with normal matter, I'd expect it to appear from bare energy + momentum available at accelerators*... Or are people just classifying them as normal neutrinos?

Sterile neutrinos lack the weak interaction of normal neutrinos. The process that allows accelerators and nuclear processes to produce normal neutrinos is through the weak force. In the same way you can't take a photon and turn it directly into a neutrino + anti-neutrino because they don't interact with electromagnetism, you can't take "bare energy and momentum" to produce sterile neutrinos easily in accelerators. More subtle approaches look for them in accelerators, but having a light mass means you need quite a bit of precision to account for missing energy, and a situation distinguishable from say a normal neutrino. Search attempts also involve looking at neutrino oscillations closely, because of various models allowing mixing between normal and sterile neutrinos that could cause them to come up or affect neutrinos emitted from processes that can't emit a sterile neutrino directly.

Interesting Stuff

[rmdingler]

The data they're sorting through is only a 1% bump above the continuum,

but before the shouting about statistical noise begins,

RTFA... it sounds plausible.

Re: Interesting Stuff

[Baloroth]

Most science fiction sounds plausible, that is why we enjoy it. We have no proof dark matter or dark energy exists, so claiming side effects is pretty stupid. Sure, it is possible but it is equally not possie. A whole segment of theoretical physicists has been working on equations that don't require dark matter or energy with promising results so far.

And just as fast as those physicists have come up with those equations, they have been ruled out. Currently, none of the equations explain the phenomenon better than dark matter (and they're often much much worse). It's not equally as possible that dark matter exists as that it doesn't: the current evidence points to dark matter being more likely to exist than not. Tweaking equations and throwing in correction terms to force the model to fit the observations is usually a bad approach in physics (or science in general).

BTW, looking for side-effects that would result if dark matter does exist is, far from being stupid, a decent method of indirectly confirming the existence of dark matter in the first place (since observing dark matter directly is really, really hard, perhaps even impossible).

Starships

[symbolset]

That is pollution left by the warp drives. The k'Thref effect causes small portions of neutrinos to go irrational.

Re:Starships

[Soulskill]

It's mainly those jerks driving Sports-Utility Starships. Those things are dilithium guzzlers.

Re:Dark matter as likely as ether and phlogiston

[Anonymous Coward]

So can the recently discovered prevalence of "dark worlds", the startling number of planets that are *not* in orbit around a sun, only recently revealed by our best orbital telescopes and their occasional occulusion of other stars. Given such worlds widely spread across entire galaxies of interstellar space, galaxies could easily mass 20% more than expected from pure stellar mapping, which would handily explain most of the anomalies of galactic expansion.

Astronomers working on dark matter theories aren't ignoring that, and in fact were a big push for research into that starting over a decade ago. They expected to see a lot of occlusions to account for dark matter, but did not. The lack of and limited observations of such events sets a clear upper bound on how many such bodies can be in the galaxy and it is way below what is needed to explain rotation curves. The connections you draw to galactic densities and thinking 20% more observed baryonic mass is enough to explain situations suggests you don't really have any clue of the scale of the actual situations. Not only do you need to better examine real data, but you need to more than glance at the headlines as a start.

Looks like a simple explanation is needed

[dbIII]

Dark matter just means stuff we know is there from gravity effects but can't actually see.
It's like having someone step on your foot in a dark room - you know somebody or something else is in there but you only know from one limited sense.

As for phlogiston - damn good idea to explain some reactions if you don't know there is more than one type of gas and it was associated with some useful empirical equations. Oxidation of iron didn't fit. Not long after oxygen was discovered. Phlogiston was science in action - put up an idea - test it - find where it doesn't work and then you can find another fit.

the startling number of planets that are *not* in orbit around a sun

Nowhere near the same thing. We can see those with light and radio waves from the stuff behind them.