A puzzling ultraviolet gentle seen throughout the Milky Manner might come from the destruction of nuggets of darkish matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up round 1 / 4 of the matter and power within the universe.
The sunshine might originate with a kind of darkish matter known as axion quark nuggets, researchers counsel in a paper submitted to arXiv.org. This type of darkish matter — if it exists — would are available in each matter and antimatter flavors, offering it a option to make an ultraviolet glow that different darkish matter particles can’t handle.
First theorized in 2003, axion quark nuggets are product of bundles of abnormal basic particles and a theoretical selection referred to as axions, that are very gentle and uncharged. These nuggets are extremely dense, packing the mass of a golf ball right into a clump only a micrometer throughout — smaller than the width of a human hair.
Not like another types of darkish matter, the researchers say, the axions enable a few of these darkish nuggets to be product of antimatter, a twin class of particles which are similar to abnormal matter however with the alternative electrical cost. When a particle of matter meets a corresponding particle of antimatter, the pair mutually destroy one another and convert all their power into gentle. That might be taking place with darkish matter nuggets, too.
“If in case you have common matter colliding with these antinuggets, they’ll annihilate and radiate away some power,” says research coauthor Michael Sekatchev, an astrophysicist now on the College of California, Berkeley. “And that’s the glow.”
The glow seen throughout the Milky Manner is a slight extra of far-ultraviolet gentle, greater than what might be accounted for by all of the identified stars, fuel, and dirt inside the galaxy. Astronomers first seen the excess within the 2010s, and over time researchers decided that the sunshine — which has the shortest wavelengths within the ultraviolet a part of the electromagnetic spectrum — have to be coming from someplace past the photo voltaic system. However they couldn’t satisfactorily clarify what was emitting the sunshine.
Main explanations have included totally different theoretical kinds of darkish matter product of unique particles. However none of those hypothetical particles have stacked up with the proof.
To test if a collision of antinuggets and abnormal matter might produce the mysterious far-ultraviolet gentle, Sekatchev and colleagues studied present laptop simulations of the Milky Manner. Utilizing the distribution of fuel and darkish matter in take a look at areas of the simulated galaxy, the workforce calculated how a lot far-ultraviolet gentle can be emitted by axion quark nuggets primarily based on their theoretical properties. The outcomes matched the quantities of additional far-ultraviolet gentle seen by spacecraft just like the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and New Horizons.
The outcomes are preliminary, notes theoretical astrophysicist James Overduin of Towson College in Maryland. “However I imagine the authors have proven convincingly that axion quark nuggets can clarify an in any other case inexplicable a part of the diffuse galactic background,” he says. “I’m not conscious of another darkish matter candidate for which that may be mentioned.”
Extra checks and observations are wanted to see if the brand new idea holds up. But when the ultraviolet gentle is certainly brought on by darkish matter nuggets, the discovering would assist scientists higher perceive darkish matter and different mysteries in physics and astronomy, resembling why there’s a lot extra matter than antimatter within the universe.
