• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Meet The Latest Dark Matter Detector: Jupiter’s Night Side

June 28, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The stuff that makes up animals, planets, and stars is just a small part of the matter scientists believe is out there. Five-sixths of all matter in the universe is believed to be an invisible substance known as dark matter. We do not know what it is because it doesn’t interact with light, only with gravity and with the weak nuclear force.

Advertisement

That force is responsible for nuclear decay, and in the case of dark matter, it might lead the substance to annihilate. This process is expected to release ionizing radiation: light that can strip electrons from their molecules – and that’s where Jupiter as a dark matter detector comes in.

Advertisement

One of the most common ions in the universe is the trihydrogen cation (H3+). That is a molecule made of three hydrogen atoms that have lost one electron. Now imagine you have a large reservoir of hydrogen, massive enough to interact with the elusive dark matter: You could theoretically measure the amount of trihydrogen cations and work out the properties of dark matter.

“We point out that dark matter (DM) can produce an additional source of H3+ in planetary atmospheres,” the study authors wrote in a paper on the topic. “This will be produced if DM scatters and is captured by planets, and consequently annihilates, producing ionizing radiation.”

The scientists, Carlos Blanco of Princeton University and Stockholm University, and Rebecca Leane of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, looked at six hours’ worth of data on Jupiter, three hours on either side of the planet’s midnight. The data was collected by the Cassini mission as it passed by the night side of the planet in 2000

Jupiter has a lot of hydrogen. It is very massive, the second heaviest object in the solar system. By looking at the night side, they looked at the portion hidden from the Sun. Sunlight can create these intriguing ions, so the approach reduces that contribution. The team found a signal – there is a certain amount of H3+  in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s nightside.

Advertisement

Now, this doesn’t immediately mean that the signal is all caused by dark matter – it could be dark matter or other sources could cause it. But they can constrain some of the properties of the substance.

The researchers believe that future observations might do even better. The European Space Agency’s JUICE mission can collect more sensitive measurements when it gets to Jupiter in the 2030s. It might also be possible to see the signal from more massive planets closer to the center of the Milky Way, where there’s more dark matter.

A paper discussing the result is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. U.S. banking lobby groups oppose proposed tax reporting law
  2. US stock futures lead Asia lower, dollar gains on yen
  3. Shark-Infested Lakes Exist And You Might Have Already Swum In One
  4. Over 6,000 Scans Reveal What ADHD Looks Like In The Brain

Source Link: Meet The Latest Dark Matter Detector: Jupiter’s Night Side

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • New Nightmare Fuel Unlocked: Watch The First Known Capture Of A Shrew By A False Widow Spider
  • Peculiar Glow In The Milky Way Might Be Dark Matter Signature
  • “I Was Scared To Death”: Missouri’s Great Cobra Scare Of 1953 Was Eventually Solved After 35 Years
  • Two Spacecraft To Fly Through Comet 3I/ATLAS’s Ion Tail – Will They Be Able To Catch Something?
  • Pioneering Heavy Water Detection Suggests Earth’s Water Might Be Older Than The Sun
  • PhD Students’ Groundbreaking New Technique Rescues JWST’s Highest Resolution Data
  • Popcorn-Like Parasites And Weird Worms Among 14 New Species Discovered In The World’s Oceans
  • Poem From 1181 CE Cairo Appears To Reference A Rare Galactic Supernova
  • With “Iridescent Live Colors”, Newly Discovered Beautiful Dwarfgoby Lives Up To Its Name (Mostly)
  • “Anti-Tail” And Odd 594-Kilometer Feature Found On Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS By Keck Observatory
  • Why Do We Call It A “Hamburger” When It Doesn’t Contain Ham?
  • What Aristotle Got Wrong About The Octopus
  • The World’s Largest Island Is Shrinking And Shifting
  • Record-Breaking Marshmallow Planet – It’s A Cold, Peculiar World On A Very Slanted Orbit
  • Distinctive Rocks Might Be Remnants Of Earth Before The Collision That Made The Moon
  • Bright Northern Lights Across America Expected This Week As 3 Coronal Mass Ejections Fly Towards Earth
  • Brain Implant Enables Paralyzed Man To Feel And Use Objects Using Someone Else’s Hands
  • “This Is A Really Big Deal”: Brain Training Significantly Improves Key Neurochemical Levels In World First
  • “Wholly Unexpected”: First-Ever Fossil Paranthropus Hand Raises Questions About Earliest Tool Makers’ Identity
  • For Centuries, Nobody Knew Why Swiss Cheese Has Holes. Then, The Mystery Was Solved.
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version