Is life hiding in dark matter?
Right under your nose there may be an invisible civilization.
Although we know that ordinary matter is responsible for only 1/20 of the energy of the Universe and 1/6 of the energy carried by matter (and everything else goes to the expense of dark energy), we consider ordinary matter to be a very important part. With the exception of cosmologists, almost all people concentrate on ordinary matter, although it is not so important from an energetic point of view.
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Ordinary matter is more dear to us, of course, because we consist of it - just like the whole tangible world in which we live. But we are also interested in it because of the rich diversity of its interactions. The interactions of ordinary matter include electromagnetic, weak and strong - they help matter to form complex dense systems. Not only stars, but also rocks, oceans, plants and animals exist thanks to the non-gravitational forces of nature responsible for the interactions. Just as a reveler is influenced more by alcohol than the other components of beer, so ordinary matter, although it carries a small part of its energy density, influences itself and the environment much more noticeably than something that just flies past.
Visible matter familiar to us can be considered as a privileged percentage - more precisely, 15% - of matter. In business and politics, 1% of people influence decisions and rules, and the remaining 99% of the population provides infrastructure and support — they serve buildings, maintain urban upkeep, and deliver food. Similarly, ordinary matter affects almost everything we notice, and dark matter, in its abundance and ubiquity, helps create clusters and galaxies, provides star formation, but has little effect on our immediate environment.
The structures close to us are governed by ordinary matter. She is responsible for the movement of our bodies, for the energy sources that feed our economy, for the computer screen or the paper on which you read it, and practically everything that you can imagine. If something interacts in such a way that it can be measured, it is worthy of attention, as it can influence our environment.
Usually dark matter does not have such an interesting influence and structure. It is assumed that dark matter is a glue that holds galaxies and their clusters in amorphous clouds. But what if this is not the case, and only our bias — and ignorance, the root of bias — causes our misconception?
In the Standard Model, there are six types of quarks, three types of charged leptons (including an electron), three types of neutrinos, particles responsible for all forces, and also the newly discovered Higgs boson. What if the world of dark matter, maybe not so much, but also diverse? In this case, the interaction of dark matter will be negligible, but a small part of it will interact with forces resembling the forces of ordinary matter. The rich and complex structure of the particles and forces of the Standard Model is responsible for many interesting phenomena. If dark matter has an interacting component, it can also be influential.
If we were creatures of dark matter, it would be wrong to assume that all particles of ordinary matter are the same. It is possible that people consisting of ordinary matter make the same mistake. Given the complexity of the SM particle physics describing the simplest components of matter known to us, it seems strange to assume that all dark matter consists of only one type of particle. Why not assume that some part of it is subject to its own interactions?
In this case, just as ordinary matter consists of different types of particles, and all these fundamental components interact through different combinations of charges, dark matter will also have different components - and at least one type of such particles will participate in non-gravitational interactions . Neutrinos in the SM are not affected by electrical force or strong interaction, unlike the six types of quarks.
Similarly, it is possible that one type of dark matter particles interacts weakly or not at all with anything other than through gravity, but some 5% of the particles experience other interactions. Based on the study of ordinary matter, we can say that this option is more likely than the usual assumption about the presence of one weakly interacting particle.
The mistake of people involved in relations with the foreign public, is an attempt to rake up the culture of another country in a bunch, and not take into account the fact that there may be a variety that is obvious to their own country. Just as a good negotiator does not presuppose the predominance of one sector of society over another, trying to compare different cultures, so an unbiased scientist should not assume that dark matter is not as interesting as usual and lacks a variety of matter that is similar to what is available in ours.
Writing on non-fiction themes, Corey S. Powell, reporting on our research in Discover, began an article saying that he was a “light-weight chauvinist” - and that we are all too. He meant that we consider that the matter familiar to us is more important, and therefore more complex and interesting. Very similar perceptions were overthrown by the Copernican revolution. But most people insist that their point of view and conviction of our importance correspond to the real world.
The many components of ordinary matter interact in different ways and affect the world differently. So maybe dark matter has different particles with different behaviors that affect the structure of the Universe in a measurable way.
When I first began to study partially interacting dark matter, I was surprised that almost no one thought that the assumption that only ordinary matter exhibited a variety of particle types and interactions was an arrogant delusion. Some physicists tried to analyze such models as “mirror dark matter,” in which dark matter repeats everything that is typical of ordinary. But such examples are exotic. Their implications are difficult to combine with what we know.
Several physicists have studied more communication patterns of dark matter interaction. But they also assumed that all dark matter is the same and undergoes the same interactions. Nobody allowed a simple possibility, according to which, although most dark matter does not interact with ordinary matter, a small amount of it can do it.
One of the reasons for this is clear. Most people believe that the new type of dark matter will not affect most of the observed phenomena, if it is only a small part of the dark matter. We have not even been able to observe the most important component of dark matter, and to deal with its small component seems premature.
But if we recall that ordinary matter transfers only 20% of energy from dark, and most of us only notice it, we can understand what this logic is wrong. Matter interacting through more powerful non-gravitational forces may be of more interest and have more influence than most of the weakly interacting matter.
With ordinary matter it is. It is overly influential, despite its small amount, as it shrinks into dense disks from which stars, planets, the Earth, and life can form. The charged component of dark matter - although it may not be so much - can also shrink and form disks, such as a visible disk in the Milky Way. It can even thicken into objects similar to stars. In principle, such a structure can be observed, and perhaps it is even easier to do than the usual cold dark matter scattered in a huge spherical halo.
If you think this way, the number of opportunities is growing rapidly. After all, electromagnetism is just one of several non-gravitational interactions experienced by particles of the Standard Model. In addition to the force that binds electrons to nuclei, SM particles experience a weak and strong nuclear interaction. In the world of ordinary matter, there can be other interactions, but so weak in the energies available to us that no one has ever observed them. But even the presence of three non-gravitational interactions hints that non-gravitational interactions can also be present in the dark sector except dark electromagnetism.
Perhaps, dark matter, in addition to forces similar to electromagnetic, is also influenced by nuclear forces. It is possible that dark stars may form from dark matter, in which nuclear reactions take place, due to which structures are formed that behave in a way more similar to ordinary matter than the dark matter that I have described so far. In this case, there can be dark stars in a dark disk surrounded by dark planets consisting of dark atoms. Dark matter can have the same complexity as usual.
Partially interacting dark matter provides a rich ground for fabrication and inspires us to consider opportunities that we would not otherwise have addressed. Writers and filmmakers can find all these additional forces and consequences lurking in the dark sector, very tempting. They might even suggest the existence of a dark life that exists in parallel with ours. In this case, instead of the usual animated creatures fighting with other animated creatures, or, in rare cases, working with them together, dark matter creatures could march across the screen, which would draw all the action.
But looking at it would not be so interesting. The problem is that filmmakers would have had difficulty filming a dark life, invisible to us. Even if dark creatures existed, we would not know about it. You may not know how cute a dark life might be - and you almost certainly won't know.
Although it is quite fun to speculate about the possibilities of the existence of a dark life, it is much more difficult to figure out how to observe it - or at least to discover its existence by indirect signs. It is rather difficult to find life consisting of the same components as we, although the search for extrasolar planets is underway. But the evidence for the existence of dark life, if it exists, will be even more elusive than the evidence for the existence of ordinary life in distant worlds.
More recently, we were able to observe the gravitational waves emanating from huge black holes. We have almost no chance to detect the gravity of a dark creature or an entire army of dark creatures, no matter how close they are to us.
Ideally, I would like to somehow communicate with this new sector. But if this new life is not exposed to the forces familiar to us, this will not happen. Although we share gravity with them, this influence of a single object or life form will be too weak to detect. Only very large objects, such as a disk in the plane of the Milky Way, can produce observable effects.
Dark objects or dark life may exist very close to us - but if the total mass of dark matter is small, we will not know about it. Even with modern technology, or any technology that we can imagine, it will be possible to verify only very specific capabilities. Shadow life, whatever exciting it may be, is unlikely to have tangible effects, and it can be a seductive but unattainable opportunity. But the dark life is a very loose assumption. There will be no problem for fiction writers to create it, but the Universe has many more obstacles for this. It is not clear which variants of chemical interactions are capable of supporting life, and we do not know what kind of environment is necessary for those options that are capable of doing this.
However, in principle, dark life can exist, right under our noses. But without stronger interactions with the matter of our world, it can entertain, fight, be active or passive - and we will never know about it. It is interesting, however, that in the presence of interactions in the dark world, related or not related to life, they can influence the structure in a measurable way. And then we can learn much more about the dark world.
Although we know that ordinary matter is responsible for only 1/20 of the energy of the Universe and 1/6 of the energy carried by matter (and everything else goes to the expense of dark energy), we consider ordinary matter to be a very important part. With the exception of cosmologists, almost all people concentrate on ordinary matter, although it is not so important from an energetic point of view.
')
Ordinary matter is more dear to us, of course, because we consist of it - just like the whole tangible world in which we live. But we are also interested in it because of the rich diversity of its interactions. The interactions of ordinary matter include electromagnetic, weak and strong - they help matter to form complex dense systems. Not only stars, but also rocks, oceans, plants and animals exist thanks to the non-gravitational forces of nature responsible for the interactions. Just as a reveler is influenced more by alcohol than the other components of beer, so ordinary matter, although it carries a small part of its energy density, influences itself and the environment much more noticeably than something that just flies past.
Visible matter familiar to us can be considered as a privileged percentage - more precisely, 15% - of matter. In business and politics, 1% of people influence decisions and rules, and the remaining 99% of the population provides infrastructure and support — they serve buildings, maintain urban upkeep, and deliver food. Similarly, ordinary matter affects almost everything we notice, and dark matter, in its abundance and ubiquity, helps create clusters and galaxies, provides star formation, but has little effect on our immediate environment.
The structures close to us are governed by ordinary matter. She is responsible for the movement of our bodies, for the energy sources that feed our economy, for the computer screen or the paper on which you read it, and practically everything that you can imagine. If something interacts in such a way that it can be measured, it is worthy of attention, as it can influence our environment.
Usually dark matter does not have such an interesting influence and structure. It is assumed that dark matter is a glue that holds galaxies and their clusters in amorphous clouds. But what if this is not the case, and only our bias — and ignorance, the root of bias — causes our misconception?
In the Standard Model, there are six types of quarks, three types of charged leptons (including an electron), three types of neutrinos, particles responsible for all forces, and also the newly discovered Higgs boson. What if the world of dark matter, maybe not so much, but also diverse? In this case, the interaction of dark matter will be negligible, but a small part of it will interact with forces resembling the forces of ordinary matter. The rich and complex structure of the particles and forces of the Standard Model is responsible for many interesting phenomena. If dark matter has an interacting component, it can also be influential.
If we were creatures of dark matter, it would be wrong to assume that all particles of ordinary matter are the same. It is possible that people consisting of ordinary matter make the same mistake. Given the complexity of the SM particle physics describing the simplest components of matter known to us, it seems strange to assume that all dark matter consists of only one type of particle. Why not assume that some part of it is subject to its own interactions?
In this case, just as ordinary matter consists of different types of particles, and all these fundamental components interact through different combinations of charges, dark matter will also have different components - and at least one type of such particles will participate in non-gravitational interactions . Neutrinos in the SM are not affected by electrical force or strong interaction, unlike the six types of quarks.
Similarly, it is possible that one type of dark matter particles interacts weakly or not at all with anything other than through gravity, but some 5% of the particles experience other interactions. Based on the study of ordinary matter, we can say that this option is more likely than the usual assumption about the presence of one weakly interacting particle.
The mistake of people involved in relations with the foreign public, is an attempt to rake up the culture of another country in a bunch, and not take into account the fact that there may be a variety that is obvious to their own country. Just as a good negotiator does not presuppose the predominance of one sector of society over another, trying to compare different cultures, so an unbiased scientist should not assume that dark matter is not as interesting as usual and lacks a variety of matter that is similar to what is available in ours.
Writing on non-fiction themes, Corey S. Powell, reporting on our research in Discover, began an article saying that he was a “light-weight chauvinist” - and that we are all too. He meant that we consider that the matter familiar to us is more important, and therefore more complex and interesting. Very similar perceptions were overthrown by the Copernican revolution. But most people insist that their point of view and conviction of our importance correspond to the real world.
The many components of ordinary matter interact in different ways and affect the world differently. So maybe dark matter has different particles with different behaviors that affect the structure of the Universe in a measurable way.
When I first began to study partially interacting dark matter, I was surprised that almost no one thought that the assumption that only ordinary matter exhibited a variety of particle types and interactions was an arrogant delusion. Some physicists tried to analyze such models as “mirror dark matter,” in which dark matter repeats everything that is typical of ordinary. But such examples are exotic. Their implications are difficult to combine with what we know.
Several physicists have studied more communication patterns of dark matter interaction. But they also assumed that all dark matter is the same and undergoes the same interactions. Nobody allowed a simple possibility, according to which, although most dark matter does not interact with ordinary matter, a small amount of it can do it.
One of the reasons for this is clear. Most people believe that the new type of dark matter will not affect most of the observed phenomena, if it is only a small part of the dark matter. We have not even been able to observe the most important component of dark matter, and to deal with its small component seems premature.
But if we recall that ordinary matter transfers only 20% of energy from dark, and most of us only notice it, we can understand what this logic is wrong. Matter interacting through more powerful non-gravitational forces may be of more interest and have more influence than most of the weakly interacting matter.
With ordinary matter it is. It is overly influential, despite its small amount, as it shrinks into dense disks from which stars, planets, the Earth, and life can form. The charged component of dark matter - although it may not be so much - can also shrink and form disks, such as a visible disk in the Milky Way. It can even thicken into objects similar to stars. In principle, such a structure can be observed, and perhaps it is even easier to do than the usual cold dark matter scattered in a huge spherical halo.
If you think this way, the number of opportunities is growing rapidly. After all, electromagnetism is just one of several non-gravitational interactions experienced by particles of the Standard Model. In addition to the force that binds electrons to nuclei, SM particles experience a weak and strong nuclear interaction. In the world of ordinary matter, there can be other interactions, but so weak in the energies available to us that no one has ever observed them. But even the presence of three non-gravitational interactions hints that non-gravitational interactions can also be present in the dark sector except dark electromagnetism.
Perhaps, dark matter, in addition to forces similar to electromagnetic, is also influenced by nuclear forces. It is possible that dark stars may form from dark matter, in which nuclear reactions take place, due to which structures are formed that behave in a way more similar to ordinary matter than the dark matter that I have described so far. In this case, there can be dark stars in a dark disk surrounded by dark planets consisting of dark atoms. Dark matter can have the same complexity as usual.
Partially interacting dark matter provides a rich ground for fabrication and inspires us to consider opportunities that we would not otherwise have addressed. Writers and filmmakers can find all these additional forces and consequences lurking in the dark sector, very tempting. They might even suggest the existence of a dark life that exists in parallel with ours. In this case, instead of the usual animated creatures fighting with other animated creatures, or, in rare cases, working with them together, dark matter creatures could march across the screen, which would draw all the action.
But looking at it would not be so interesting. The problem is that filmmakers would have had difficulty filming a dark life, invisible to us. Even if dark creatures existed, we would not know about it. You may not know how cute a dark life might be - and you almost certainly won't know.
Although it is quite fun to speculate about the possibilities of the existence of a dark life, it is much more difficult to figure out how to observe it - or at least to discover its existence by indirect signs. It is rather difficult to find life consisting of the same components as we, although the search for extrasolar planets is underway. But the evidence for the existence of dark life, if it exists, will be even more elusive than the evidence for the existence of ordinary life in distant worlds.
More recently, we were able to observe the gravitational waves emanating from huge black holes. We have almost no chance to detect the gravity of a dark creature or an entire army of dark creatures, no matter how close they are to us.
Ideally, I would like to somehow communicate with this new sector. But if this new life is not exposed to the forces familiar to us, this will not happen. Although we share gravity with them, this influence of a single object or life form will be too weak to detect. Only very large objects, such as a disk in the plane of the Milky Way, can produce observable effects.
Dark objects or dark life may exist very close to us - but if the total mass of dark matter is small, we will not know about it. Even with modern technology, or any technology that we can imagine, it will be possible to verify only very specific capabilities. Shadow life, whatever exciting it may be, is unlikely to have tangible effects, and it can be a seductive but unattainable opportunity. But the dark life is a very loose assumption. There will be no problem for fiction writers to create it, but the Universe has many more obstacles for this. It is not clear which variants of chemical interactions are capable of supporting life, and we do not know what kind of environment is necessary for those options that are capable of doing this.
However, in principle, dark life can exist, right under our noses. But without stronger interactions with the matter of our world, it can entertain, fight, be active or passive - and we will never know about it. It is interesting, however, that in the presence of interactions in the dark world, related or not related to life, they can influence the structure in a measurable way. And then we can learn much more about the dark world.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/370217/
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