Scientists from the University of York have discovered a sub-atomic particle that could have formed the mysterious “dark matter” in our Universe during the Big Bang.
The recent study conducted by Dr MIkhail Bashkanov and Professor Daniel Watts from the department of physics at the University of York shed light on dark matter issue. As Science Daily reported, Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light.
Thus, recently published the first assessment of the viability of this new dark matter candidate proves an interesting theory about a sub-atomic particle and Big Bang theory.
Up to 80% of the Universe could be dark matter, but despite many decades of study, its physical origin has remained an enigma. While it cannot be seen directly, scientists know it exists because of its interaction via gravity with a visible matter like stars and planets. Actually, dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light.
In other words, nuclear physicists just put forward a new candidate for the mysterious matter — a particle they recently discovered called the d-star hexaquark.
D-star hexaquark could reveal many secrets of dark matter
The particle is composed of six quarks — the fundamental particles that usually combine in trios to make up protons and neutrons. Importantly, the six quarks in a d-star result in a boson particle, which means that when many d-stars are present they can combine together in very different ways to the protons and neutrons.
The research group at York suggest that in the conditions shortly after the Big Bang, many d-star hexaquarks could have grouped together as the universe cooled and expanded to form the fifth state of matter — Bose-Einstein condensate.
“The origin of dark matter in the universe is one of the biggest questions in science and one that, until now, has drawn a blank. Our first calculations indicate that condensates of d-stars are a feasible new candidate for dark matter. This new result is particularly exciting since it doesn’t require any concepts that are new to physics,” Professor Daniel Watts said.
To summarize, Dr Bashkanov says that the next move to establish this new dark matter candidate will be to obtain a deeper understanding of how the d-stars interact. In particular, when do they attract and when do they repel each other?
“We are leading new measurements to create d-stars inside an atomic nucleus and see if their properties are different to when they are in free space,” Bashkanov concluded.
