Theoretically, a “hurricane” of dark matter may be passing the Sun and be visible from Earth.
Spain’s University of Zaragoza’s Ciaran O’Hare served as the study’s principal investigator. It examined the S1 stream, a collection of neighboring stars travelling in the same direction, and was published in Physical Review D. These are “believed to be what’s left of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way ate billions of years ago,” according to a statement from APS Physics.
The S1 stream, which contains 30,000 stars, was discovered last year by the ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, which is mapping our galaxy’s billion stars. In our galaxy, there are about 30 of these streams. Each of them is a holdover from a previous accident.
S1, however, is quite intriguing because it is “blowing” past us at roughly 500 kph (310 miles per second). The researchers also suggested that this might have an impact on the visible dark matter in our environment.
WIMPs are a kind of dark matter that has received a lot of attention. The statement read, “Future WIMP detectors may show an effect from S1, but current WIMP detectors probably won’t.”
All galaxies are believed to have originated inside of a sizable halo of dark matter, which is invisible to the naked eye and has no interactions with ordinary matter. However, the researchers discovered that around 10 billion solar masses of dark matter from the initial dwarf galaxy were travelling down S1.
a representation of the Sun being passed by a torrent of stars. As the S1 stream “smacks the Solar System in the face,” as the authors put it, “its counter-rotating structure will make a lot more dark matter appear to emanate from the same section of the sky as the regular dark matter wind,” according to Jon Lomberg/N.A.S.A/C. O’Hare Cosmos Magazine.In fact, it should create a ring-shaped structure around this wind that directed dark matter detectors may easily discover in the future.
Axions, which are speculative particles 500 million times lighter than an electron and may represent dark matter, were also suggested to be able to be found in the stream, according to ScienceAlert. They said, “In the presence of a strong magnetic field, these ultralight particles, which we can’t see, could be turned into photons, which we can see. Even though many people have tried, dark matter has never been found directly. But maybe this “hurricane” will give them a fun chance to do so.
Soucre: theancientzen.com/
