Dark matters could be hiding in the Sun and affecting neutrinos

We ’re passably much sure that dark matter exists , but we ’re still work to nab down incisively what disconsolate matter is . One take candidate , known as the WIMP , might be trapped inside the Sun , sucking heat away and altering fusion reactions .

If WIMPs – weakly interacting monumental particles – really are the missing coloured subject subatomic particle , then some of them are being sucked into the Sun by our star ’s intense solemnity . Once inside , the WIMPs would profit energy by smashing into protons , which would very slowly move heat away from the center of the Sun . The effect should be obtrusive – we should be able to detect WIMP - altered solar temperatures .

Unfortunately , we ca n’t hold fast a thermometer into the Sun and take a measurement , or even do the less fanciful version of that . We ’re stuck with indirect methods , and the most promising is to delay on the neutrino that the Sun is emit . The neutrinos are created by various fusion reactions inside the Sun , and unlike reactions pass off at dissimilar locations along the solar wheel spoke . We get laid a reaction producing boron-8 occurs very near the shopping mall of the Sun , on about 4 % of the solar wheel spoke , while nitrogen-13 is produce further out , at about 16 % the solar radius .

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Those reactions variegate with the temperature of the Sun at their point along the solar radius , so any solar dark matter would exit a very noticeable signature as it affected these fusion . All we would then have to do is check the neutrino conflate emanating from the Sun to see if there are any sign of change . It should be pretty obtrusive – simulations by physicists Ilidio Lopes and Joseph Silk suggest the presence of WIMPs would alter the amount of neutrionos created in boron-8 reactions by a whopping 30 % .

The two physicist believe that , if they ’re right , the blue issue might in reality be directly detectable on more hefty neutrino sensing element , perhaps even within the bounds of what we can do with upgrades to existing machine . Gianpaolo Bellini , a scientist at Italy ’s Borexino solar - neutrino detector , point out that current solar neutrino measure do n’t bear out their hypothesis , although he concede that there ’s a big enough margin for error with their detectors that they ca n’t rule out Lopes and Silk ’s ideas .

There ’s also a more insidious trouble . This new theory depends on us having a somewhat clear melodic theme of the Sun ’s internal mechanism and works , so that we can definitively say that WIMPs are causing any alterations and not something naturally occurring within the Sun . That ’s cognition we only do n’t possess yet , although Lopes and Silk are affirmative that , if nothing else , their theory can help peg down down the possible candidates for the dark matter particle .

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