It is believed that dark matter does not reveal itself in any way when interacting with the rest of matter, particularly dark matter. However, a recent model shows that its clots that fly around the Galaxy can cause stars to twinkle.
Elusive dark matter
Dark matter is an elusive form of matter that makes up a significant portion of the mass of the Universe, but does not manifest itself in any way other than gravitational and strong interactions. Therefore, scientists can’t determine before the fact what it is, or at least confirm that it exists.
Since in the electromagnetic interaction dark matter does not enter, and the gravitational influence of relatively small clusters of it is not very significant, the traditional astronomical methods of searching for invisible objects that can detect black holes and neutron stars with it does not work very well.
However, as a recent study has shown, sometimes it can still happen. The assumption concerns a group of hypotheses in which dark matter particles may form compact massive objects that are inside the Milky Way. In this case, the researchers believe they may still manifest themselves through interactions with starlight.
Interaction with light
In general, the researchers began their work by modeling the dark matter clots themselves. They concluded that they can generate so-called dark photons. But when scientists thought about ways to detect them, they realized that a possible detection method could be applied to detect ordinary photons as well.
The main mechanism by which dark matter can manifest itself in interaction with light is through the force of attraction. We’re talking about gravitational lenses, which are well known to scientists. In other words, they can be detected by the twinkling of distant stars. However, so far scientists have proved it only for clumps with radii from 10 to 104 solar radii.
Scientists suggest looking for various strange objects and events recorded in starry sky surveys compiled in recent decades. There are indeed many signals recorded there that could actually turn out to be anything from brown dwarfs to something whose nature can only be explained by new theories.
According to phys.org
