Dark matter similar to long-known subatomic particles

Scientists have come up with a new theory which claims that dark matter really acts like subatomic particles, which the has been known to science since the 1930s.

Dark matter is the thing keeping galaxies, stars, our solar system, and our bodies intact. Yet no one has been able to observe it, and it has often been regarded as a totally new exotic form of matter, such as a particle moving in extra dimensions of space or its quantum version, supersymmetry.

An international group of researchers has now proposed a theory that dark matter is very similar to pions, which are responsible for binding atomic nuclei together.

Hitoshi Murayama at the University of Tokyo said that they had seen this kind of particle before, and it had the same properties- same type of mass, the same type of interactions, in the same type of theory of strong interactions that gave forth the ordinary pions.

The new theory predicts dark matter was likely to interact with itself within galaxies or clusters of galaxies, possibly modifying the predicted mass distributions.

It could resolve outstanding discrepancies between data and computer simulations, said Eric Kuflik, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University.

University of California, Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Yonit Hochberg added that the key differences in these properties between this new class of dark matter theories and previous ideas have profound implications on how dark matter could be discovered in upcoming experimental searches.

The next step would be to put this theory to the test using experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider and the new SuperKEK-B, and a proposed experiment SHiP.

The findings are published in Physical Review Letters.