{"id":235116,"date":"2026-04-13T23:36:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/self-interacting-dark-matter-may-solve-three-cosmic-puzzles"},"modified":"2026-04-13T23:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:36:06","slug":"self-interacting-dark-matter-may-solve-three-cosmic-puzzles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/self-interacting-dark-matter-may-solve-three-cosmic-puzzles","title":{"rendered":"Self-interacting dark matter may solve three cosmic puzzles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/self-interacting-dark-matter-may-solve-three-cosmic-puzzles2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A study led by UC Riverside physicist Hai-Bo Yu suggests that a new type of dark matter could explain three astrophysical puzzles across vastly different environments. Published in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>, the study <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/txxx-97ln\" target=\"_blank\">proposes<\/a> that dense clumps of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM)\u2014each about a million times the mass of the sun\u2014can account for unusual gravitational effects observed in gravitational lenses, stellar streams, and satellite galaxies.<\/p>\n<p>Dark matter, which makes up about 85% of the universe\u2019s matter, cannot be seen directly. The standard model assumes it is \u201ccold\u201d and collisionless, meaning that particles pass through one another without interacting. This model struggles, however, to explain certain high-density structures observed in the universe.<\/p>\n<p>Yu\u2019s work instead focuses on <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-07-interacting-dark-parsec-problem.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">SIDM<\/a>, in which dark matter particles collide and exchange energy. These interactions can trigger \u201cgravothermal collapse,\u201d forming extremely dense, compact cores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A study led by UC Riverside physicist Hai-Bo Yu suggests that a new type of dark matter could explain three astrophysical puzzles across vastly different environments. Published in Physical Review Letters, the study proposes that dense clumps of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM)\u2014each about a million times the mass of the sun\u2014can account for unusual gravitational [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235116","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\/235116","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}