{"id":114028,"date":"2020-10-07T20:23:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T03:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/dark-matter-particles-the-size-of-planets-yes-say-cold-model-physicists"},"modified":"2020-10-07T20:23:36","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T03:23:36","slug":"dark-matter-particles-the-size-of-planets-yes-say-cold-model-physicists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/dark-matter-particles-the-size-of-planets-yes-say-cold-model-physicists","title":{"rendered":"Dark Matter Particles the Size of Planets? \u2013\u201cYes\u201d Say \u2018Cold-Model\u2019 Physicists"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, we thought it was absurd. How else could you respond to the idea that black holes generate swirling clouds of planet-sized particles that could be the dark matter thought to hold galaxies together? We tend to think about particles as being tiny but, theoretically, there is no reason they can\u2019t be as big as a galaxy,\u201d said theoretical physicist Asimina Arvanitaki<\/a>, at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics referring to the heated debate about the standard model for dark matter that proposes that it is \u2018cold,\u2019 meaning that the particles move slowly compared to the speed of light which is tied to the mass of dark matter particles. The lower the mass of the particle, the \u2018warmer\u2019 it is and the faster it will move.<\/p>\n

On January 9, NASA physicists using the Hubble Space Telescope reported<\/a> that although the type of particle that makes up dark matter is still a mystery, a compelling observational test for the cold dark matter passed \u201cwith flying colors,\u201d The NASA team used a new \u201ccosmic magnifying glasses\u201d technique that found that dark matter forms much smaller clumps than previously known, confirming one of the fundamental predictions of the widely accepted \u201ccold dark matter\u201d theory.<\/p>\n

Physicists at the University of California, Davis, taking the temperature of dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up about a quarter of our universe now report<\/a> that the model of cold (more massive) dark matter holds at very large scales\u201d said Chris Fassnacht<\/a>, a physics professor at UC Davis, \u201cbut doesn\u2019t work so well on the scale of individual galaxies.\u201d That\u2019s led to other models including \u2018warm\u2019 dark matter with lighter, faster-moving particles and \u2018hot\u2019 dark matter with particles moving close to the speed of light that have been ruled out by observations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAt first, we thought it was absurd. How else could you respond to the idea that black holes generate swirling clouds of planet-sized particles that could be the dark matter thought to hold galaxies together? We tend to think about particles as being tiny but, theoretically, there is no reason they can\u2019t be as big [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}