• 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

Proposed “Dark Dwarfs” Near The Galactic Center Could Reveal The Nature Of Dark Matter

July 7, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

The way to find the darkness could be to look for the light. It might be a Zen, but the statement is also the latest proposal to find the nature of dark matter. The authors think that objects powered by dark matter could be small but detectable sources of light near the center of the galaxy. If so, finding them could be key to finally resolving what dark matter is.

The movements of stars and galaxies reveal the presence of gravitational forces far too large to come from the matter we can see. Determining the nature of the “dark matter” we haven’t accounted for is one of the great unfulfilled quests of the last half century. Among the many proposals, WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) may be the most prominent.

Precisely because of their weak interactions with ordinary matter, WIMPS would be very hard to detect, so despite being one of the earliest explanations proposed, and therefore hunted for, they have yet to be found.

Dark matter is thought to be clustered near the center of the galaxy – being subject to gravitational forces makes it almost inevitable that’s where it will be most abundant. If WIMPS make up a large proportion of dark matter, that means they will concentrate there to a point where they behave differently from places where they are more dispersed. One such distinctive behavior could be in causing objects that would be brown dwarfs elsewhere to light up.

“Dark matter interacts gravitationally, so it could be captured by stars and accumulate inside them. If that happens, it might also interact with itself and annihilate, releasing energy that heats the star,” said Dr Jeremy Sakstein of the University of Hawai’i in a statement. 

Dark matter supercharging a star is hard to detect, however. The star is already bright, so it is hard to tell if it is hotter and brighter because of dark matter. On the other hand, brown dwarfs, objects with 1.2-8 percent of the Sun’s mass, don’t have enough gravitational force to initiate fusion in ordinary hydrogen. They glow faintly through a combination of heat from their formation and the fusion of much rarer deuterium, which can occur at lower pressures than ordinary hydrogen.

Out between the unfashionable spiral arms of the galaxy, brown dwarfs probably collect a little dark matter, but not enough to make a difference. Near the galactic center, Sakstein and co-authors on a new paper think, things could work differently. 

“The more dark matter you have around, the more you can capture,” Sakstein said. “And the more dark matter ends up inside the star, the more energy will be produced through its annihilation.”

Thus, what would be a brown dwarf elsewhere becomes what the team call a “Dark Dwarf”, which ironically is not dark, because that energy comes out as light.

The idea only works if dark matter is composed of WIMPS, or something quite similar, rather than explanations such as sterile neutrinos, axions, and a variety of other proposals.

So if we find a dark dwarf, we have instantly narrowed the dark matter search down dramatically.

Finding such an object would not be easy. Any dark dwarfs would be far away, in a region hidden by dust and crowded with other objects. Worse still, they wouldn’t look very different from ordinary stars.

Nevertheless, Sakstein said, “There were a few markers, but we suggested Lithium-7 because it would really be a unique effect.” Lithium-7 is easily fused within ordinary stars. Consequently, only the youngest stars have noticeable amounts. However, only the heavier dark dwarfs would burn lithium-7, assuming they operate as we would expect. That means that while the heavier dark dwarfs would look like curiously bright red dwarfs, a lower mass population should exist that can be distinguished by the presence of lithium-7.

Therefore, if lithium-7 was detected in what appear to be stars near the galactic center, the most likely explanation is that these would be dark dwarfs, and the region is awash with WIMPS.

JWST might be able to detect lithium-7 in an individual object at the galactic center, but the authors also propose a statistical test using other telescopes that are in less frantic demand. Hopefully, before they wake a Balrog.

The study is published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and a preprint is available on arXiv.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. ECB trims emergency support but insists “no tapering”
  2. With scenes from space, TV series shines light on team fixing spectrometer
  3. The Average Color Of The Universe Is A Morning Wake-up Call
  4. New Cosmic Microwave Background Measurements Sharpen Puzzling “Hubble Tension”

Source Link: Proposed “Dark Dwarfs” Near The Galactic Center Could Reveal The Nature Of Dark Matter

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • North America’s Oldest Pterosaur And Turtle Fossils Found In Arizona’s Petrified Forest
  • Proposed “Dark Dwarfs” Near The Galactic Center Could Reveal The Nature Of Dark Matter
  • Watch: 18-Kilometer-High Ash Cloud Looms Over Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki After “Explosive” Eruption
  • “ShipGoo001”: Mystery Of Entirely New Lifeform Discovered Coating A Great Lakes Ship
  • Rare White Humpback Whale Calf Filmed By Drone Off Australia’s East Coast
  • Who Was Buried At Cave Of Salome: A Female Disciple, Jesus’ Midwife, Or A Princess?
  • “Hidden” Changes To US Health Data Swapping “Gender” For “Sex” Spark Fears For Public Trust
  • Easter Island Was Never As Isolated As We Thought – Study Puts That “Strange Argument” To Bed
  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • 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