SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the something-unobservable-made-of-something-unobserved,-it's-axionmatic dept.
In an article Friday on Universe Today, Paul M. Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State, discusses one tantalizing possibility for explaining dark matter, which is that it may be comprised of particles called axions.
Axions are an exotic hypothetical particle invented to explain a conundrum in high energy physics having to to with [sic] charge-parity symmetry and the strong nuclear force. Like dark matter, we have not actually observed axions.
The conundrum is that by all rights the strong nuclear force should violate [CP-symmetry]. There are terms in the mathematics that very obviously break CP-symmetry, and yet we don't see any signs of symmetry breaking with the strong nuclear force in any of our experiments. So something must be going on to restore this symmetry when it ought to be broken.
The answer – or at least one potential answer – is a new kind of particle called the axion. The axion restores a certain kind of balance in the force (yes I'm aware of the Star wars reference here) so that the CP-symmetry is preserved and everyone can go about their daily lives. Of course experiments to date haven't directly revealed the existence of the axion, and there's a range of possible masses and properties that the axion could have.
Based on the relationship of galactic core objects to galaxy sizes, a team of astronomers was able to place upper bounds on axion particle mass, which will help guide future experiments.
It turns out that some of the range of possible axion properties allow that hypothetical particle to be a candidate for the dark matter.
The Dark Axions
If we let the axion be the dark matter it can generally explain all the usual dark matter observations. It can explain the rotation curves inside of galaxies. It can explain the motions of galaxies within galaxy clusters. It can be manufactured in sufficient abundance in the early Universe to fit observations of the cosmic microwave background. And so on.
Axions acting as dark matter also present a potential alternative for black holes in the center of galaxies
axions in the cores of galaxies can bundle together tightly enough to form a single massive ball that would at first blush look a lot like a supermassive black hole. It would be small, it wouldn't interact with light, and it would be incredibly massive.
He also notes that the recent imaging of Sagittarius A* does not rule out axion cores.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday May 20 2019, @07:09PM (1 child)
Says the person that doesn't understand multi-dimensional fairy physics, or how their dimension interacts with our specific place in space-time. If you cared to read it, you would've seen about 30 pages on how it might actually be fairy-fucking that's influencing the physics of the ping-pong balls. Not the other way around. It's also not proven that salamanders are responsible, or even consenting, to the rampant buggering that fairies perform seasonally. Only a light causal relationship has been shown with the frequency and ferocity of the sodomising of salamanders and fairy population levels over time. Regardless of the apparent "retardity" of the model, careful measuring of wrecked salamander anus, nonetheless reliably models the ping-pong balls movement. As controversial as the salamander anus diameter constant is, it works.
I believe you owe the fairy scientists an apology. Do you know hard it is to keep a freshly fucked salamander still while you measure it's prolapse? I thought not.
Food for thought.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @09:36PM
Scientists of alternate sexuality, please.