Gilles & Cecilie Studio
POP the kettle on. Sit down and pay attention carefully to the bubbles of water vapour as they broaden, collapse and collide. You have simply run an experiment simulating the big bang – the very origin of the universe – and you might also have solved the thriller of how the cosmos bought its dark matter.
Well, type of. Because by mulling over colliding bubbles on a cosmological scale, physicists are discovering trigger for hypothesis about contemporary sparks of cosmic creation. It is feasible, they are saying, that within the weeks after the big bang there was a second, equally profound second of transformation. This one could have spawned monstrous shadow particles trillions of occasions the mass of people who make up regular matter and will make sense of the mysterious, invisible matter that appears to carry galaxies collectively.
As outlandish as it’d sound, the idea of a “dark” big bang is broadly in keeping with a quiet revolution that’s already beneath means, as cosmologists rewrite what we consider as the usual big bang to account for a number of distinct “phase transitions”, every leaving its mark on the cosmos. What’s extra, we now have the instruments to check this idea by peering into the universe’s earliest moments and untangling the faint ripples produced by these profound primordial shifts.
If we discover proof for the dark big bang amongst them, it could not solely rework our view of the early universe, but additionally provide contemporary clues concerning the nature of dark matter and the way we’d lastly unmask its id.
We assume that dark matter exists as a result of it solves a number of astronomical complications. …