Scientists predict that "hurricane of dark matter" will collide with Earth

Do not panic.

Yes, astronomers suggest that it is very likely that a "hurricane of dark matter" will settle on Earth as it moves through the Milky Way – but it should not cause any damage. In fact, in the hunt for the mysterious particle (or particles) that make up dark matter, the "hurricane" can provide our best chance of detection.

Throughout the Milky Way, there are a number of stellar streams, star assemblies that were once dwarf galaxies or clusters. In ancient history, they clashed with the Milky Way and were torn apart, leaving a stream of stars in orbit surrounding the galactic center. One of these stellar flows, dubbed S1 and discovered last year by scientists examining data from the Gaia satellite of the European Space Agency, directly crosses the path of our sun.

As our solar system travels outside the Milky Way, it travels through a dark matter at about 230 km per second. A study, published on November 7 and led by researchers from the University of Zaragoza, suggests that dark matter present in the flow could move twice as fast – about 500 km / s – which gives us a good better chance of detecting dark matter.

Of course, we do not know exactly what constitutes dark matter, but there are a number of candidates, including massive particles with low interaction (WIMP), massive particles with gravitational interaction (GIMP) and axions – elementary particles hypotheticals posed by physicists.

Since the S1 steller flows directly through the solar system, the hurricane of dark matter may pass through that of various detectors scattered around the world set up to detect these hypothetical particles. The study admits that current iterations of WIMP detectors will likely do not see the dark matter of stream S1. These, however, are designed to detect the "axionic dark matter", based on a hypothetical particle called axion.

Given that dark matter represents about 85% of the matter in the universe, the detection of the particle (s) that compose it would fundamentally change the way we perceive the universe. So, really, there is nothing to worry about when you hear the term "hurricane of dark matter" – in fact, it is a good thing.

The only thing that's going to blow is your mind.

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