Introduction:
- Dark matter appears to be everywhere in the universe, yet we don't know what it is
- One idea that many scientists think dark matter could be is a WIMP but there are many other ideas
- Asymmetric dark matter is a concept for dark matter that wouldn't have an anti-particle. While this doesn't seem far fetched at first, it is surprising to a lot of physicists.
How to destroy a world with dark matter:
- If dark matter can collide with regular matter it may sink to the center of the Earth and collect there until it collapses into a black hole
- This could be stopped if dark matter particles bounce off each other, but that is unlikely to be an issue
- Since the Earth hasn't been destroyed yet, we can exclude dark matter ideas that would destroy the Earth and look for other models
- One possibility is that the black holes evaporate and produce particles that we might be able to detect
What else can we learn:
- Dark matter black holes could be detected by the neutrinos that they emit, but we haven't seen them yet so more limits can be made
- Surprisingly, Neutron stars aren't very good at collecting dark matter
- Also, on large scales of the universe there wouldn't be much difference between Alan's asymmetric dark matter and other models like WIMPs
Links to Science Outreach Material:
Special thanks to Colin Vendromin for the music also thanks to Zac Kenny for the logo!