Physicists claim that dark matter can form planets orbiting ordinary stars. And these celestial bodies are quite possible to detect if you apply two different methods used to search for exoplanets.
Dark matter forms planets
A team of physicists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have suggested that dark matter can form planets. Scientists are still arguing about what this mysterious matter really is. It does not manifest itself in any way except for the gravitational interaction, so we can only guess mainly about which particles form it.
Until recently, scientists could only judge the presence of dark matter by observations of galaxies. However, scientists have recently proved that this mysterious matter can penetrate inside them and form separate giant balls.
Now scientists have thought that it can form smaller objects up to the size of several individual particles. At the same time, their mass becomes comparable to an ordinary planet and they can get into the gravitational field of some star. The new article lists the conditions under which this becomes possible.
Exotic objects hide among ordinary planets
Moreover, scientists in their article indicate that it is possible to prove the existence of planets made of dark matter using observations. According to them, they hide among ordinary bodies of gas and rock that orbit ordinary stars.
And they can be detected by combining two methods commonly used to detect exoplanets. The first of them is called the radial velocity method. It consists in the fact that during orbit, the gravity of the planet affects the movement of the star in space. Using it, it is possible to find out the mass of both those bodies consisting of ordinary matter and those formed by dark matter.
But the transit method, used when a planet passes between us and a star, allows us to estimate the radius of a celestial body in accordance with how weak the light is. From these two methods, for an ordinary planet, it is possible to deduce the density and understand what it is.
However, for a planet made of dark matter, the transit method will give very strange results due to the fact that dark matter does not cover anything and can only bend light. As a consequence, the density of the planet will be either too large or too small.
According to www.sciencealert.com
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