Dark matter shock: scientists speculate that a mysterious substance predates the Big Bang | Science | New



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Dark matter is probably 80% of the mass of the universe. But this alone is the extent of our knowledge of this mysterious and omnipresent substance, scientists not knowing exactly what it is and how it has become. Now, an innovative study has revealed that dark matter was perhaps even weirder than we thought, its origin may have preceded the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang.

Dark matter is difficult to grasp because it is not directly observable.

Scientists know that dark matter dominates the ordinary matter of the universe more than five times.

That's because galaxies are spinning too fast to hold their stars.

Without the dark matter that keeps them together, the laws of physics say that these galaxies would fall apart.

For example, the Milky Way rotates so fast that it must contain 30 times more dark matter than ordinary matter.

READ MORE: NASA detects the oldest molecule in the Universe

Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University and author of the study, believes he has found a new link between particle physics and astronomy.

He said: "If the dark matter is made up of new particles born before the Big Bang, they affect the way the galaxies are distributed in the sky in a unique way.

"This connection can be used to reveal their identity and draw conclusions about the times that preceded the Big Bang."

The shock results contradict a long-held assumption that dark matter is a remnant of the Big Bang.

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Mr. Tenkanen added, "If dark matter was really a relic of the Big Bang, in many cases, researchers would have had to see a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments."

The seismic study shows how dark matter may have been produced before the Big Bang – the dominant cosmological model of the observable universe.

Dark matter would be born in the era of cosmic inflation, when space – time was expanding at an unimaginable rate.

This expansion is thought to have led to the introduction of bizarre particles such as the famous Higgs boson.

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Mr. Tenkanen added, "We do not know what dark matter is, but if it has something to do with scalar particles, it may be older than the Big Bang.

"With the proposed mathematical scenario, we do not have to assume new types of interactions between visible matter and dark matter beyond gravity, we already know that it already exists."

The astrophysicist believes that potentially decisive discoveries have been ignored so far because scientists have neglected the simplest mathematical scenario possible for the origins of dark matter.

And the research could even lead to a new method of testing the theory by observing the signatures left by dark matter on the distribution of matter in the Universe.

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