“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n
When analyzing early universe data, the Standard Model of Cosmology suggests that the universe should be more \u201cclumpy\u201d that what we observe.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
A new study suggests that interactions between the two most elusive particle types in the universe\u2014dark matter and neutrinos\u2014could help explain this discrepancy.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
The study analyzes cosmic shear data from both the early and late universe, and theorizes that such interactions have a strength of about 10-4.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Two of the most enigmatic particles in the known universe are dark matter<\/a> (theorized to make up most of the matter in the cosmos) and neutrinos<\/a> (weakling-interacting, nearly massless subatomic particles that can\u2019t be observed directly). Because these two particles are decidedly anti-social, it makes sense that the \u039bCDM model\u2014our current best guess of what makes the universe tick\u2014suggests that they certainly don\u2019t interact with each other. Right?<\/p>\n Well, not so fast. A new study (from scientists at the University of Sheffield, the National Centre for Nuclear Research in Poland, and the University of Science and Technology of China) analyzes cosmic shear data from the early- and late-universe sources, and suggests that interactions between these two particles<\/a> could explain why the cosmos isn\u2019t as clumpy as we\u2019d expect from early-universe data alone. The results were published in the journal Nature Astronomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cObservations of the modern universe indicate that matter is slightly less clumped than expected, pointing to a mild mismatch between early- and late-time measurements,\u201d Eleonora Di Valentino, a co-author of the study from the University of Sheffield, said in a press statement<\/a>. \u201cOur study shows that interactions between dark matter and neutrinos could help explain this difference, offering new insight into how structure formed in the universe<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n To arrive at this conclusion, scientists first needed loads of data<\/a> from both eras of the universe\u2014and luckily, they had a lot to choose from. For the early universe, they relied on observations from the terrestrial Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the space-based Planck Telescope. For observations of more recent times, the team relied on the massive trove of data from the Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.<\/p>\n With data in hand, Valentino and her team focused on a phenomenon called cosmic shear<\/a>, which describes the distortion of images of distant galaxies<\/a> due to weak gravitational lensing caused by the universe\u2019s structure. According to Universe Today<\/a>, if neutrinos and dark matter influence each other, this interaction would impact the structure of galactic clusters and voids in a similar manner to what we observe today. By the team\u2019s observations, dark matter and neutrinos react with a strength of about 10-4.<\/p>\n While a compelling piece of evidence, the scientists note that the statistical significance of this finding rests at three sigma (3\u03c3), which is not enough to be considered definitive proof (that typically requires a statistical significance of 5\u03c3). Valentino also clarifies that this discovery doesn\u2019t necessarily upend the \u039bCDM<\/a> model, but may indicate that it is complete.<\/p>\n Hopefully, future cosmic microwave background experiments, more precise weak lensing surveys, and ever more accurate data from new telescopes<\/a> could further confirm (or deny) this big \u201cwoah, if true\u201d moment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would not only shed new light on a persistent mismatch between different cosmological probes, but also provide particle physicists with a concrete direction,\u201d William Giar\u00e8, a co-author of the study from the University of Sheffield, said in a press statement, \u201cindicating which properties to look for in laboratory<\/a> experiments to help finally unmask the true nature of dark matter.\u201d<\/p>\n You Might Also Like<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.” Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":519135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[231256,21744,231255,83493,231257,70839,492,159,53011,67,132,231254,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-519134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-cosmic-shear","9":"tag-dark-matter","10":"tag-eleonora-di-valentino","11":"tag-interactions","12":"tag-known-universe","13":"tag-neutrinos","14":"tag-physics","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-subatomic-particles","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-university-of-sheffield","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115901973420919001","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}