Dark matter may send stars over the edge

• Autores: Jesse Emspak
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3045, 2015, pág. 14
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Astronomers thought white dwarfs gained mass from a companion star, but about half of the type la supernovae show no signs of a companion. Now Joseph Bramante at Northwestern University in Massachusetts says dark matter could provide the missing mass. Dark matter makes up most of the mass in the universe but shuns contact with ordinary matter. Since it has mass and responds to gravity, it should pool inside the dense white dwarfs. Assuming that dark matter particles are fairly heavy and can interact with each other in some way, they could increase the white dwarf's density enough to make it explode. To test whether this is really happening, Bramante suggests looking for type la supernovae in areas with lots of dark matter, the central region of a galaxy, say, and checking to see if their progenitor stars differ from what are expected. Dejan Stojkovic of the State University of New York at Buffalo says the model sounds reasonable, but remains cautious. It depends on dark matter having specific properties, and nobody knows yet what kind of particles make up dark matter.