Predicting the composition of dark matter
An artist’s performance of big bang nucleosynthesis, the early period of the universe in which proton “p” and neutron “n” combined to form light elements. The presence of dark matter “χ” changes how much each element will form. Credit: Cara Giovanetti/University of New York A new analysis by a team of physicists offers an innovative way to predict the “cosmological signature” for dark matter models. A team of physicists has developed a method for predicting the composition of dark matter—the invisible matter detected only by its gravitational pull on ordinary matter and its discovery has long been sought after by scientists. His work, which appeared in the journal Physical Review Letter , centered on predicting a “cosmological signature” for dark matter models with masses between electrons and protons. Previous methods have predicted similar signatures for simpler dark matter models. The research establishes a new way to find these signatures