Dark Matter

tycon69

I was simply wondering if dark matter is most-likely a Solid, Liquid, Gas, or Plasma.

jdg812

If plasma is hot, it emits light.
If plasma is cold, it recombinates and becomes gas.

Parlyne

It is pretty much guaranteed to be a gas. The interactions that allow materials to form solid and liquid phases are electromagnetic in nature; and, plasmas are formed when there's enough energy that charged particles can remain unbound from each other. All of these are electromagnetic effects. Dark matter cannot be electrically charged. If it were, not only would it be unable to form large halos around galaxies and clusters, as it would tend to radiate away energy as light, but it would interact with light passing through it and we'd see blurring of distant objects.

tycon69

So it'd most likely resemble an ideal gas?
Or is there the possibility that it is a new classification all-together?

mgb_phys

It depends what type of dark matter, there are two main theories:
MACHOS (Massive astrophysical compact halo object) are regular star/planet stuff that is too cool to glow in visible light. So these are solids (dust/planets/rocks) or gas (brown dwarfs) or degenerate matter (neutron stars)

WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles) are undiscovered heavy sub atomic particles like neutrinos that have mass but no charge or other properties that would have an easily detectable effect in telescopes.
I don't know what 'state' you would call a single neutrino all by itself in space?

To be honest the states of matter thing isn't very useful in astronomy. Solid/liquid/gas is really a statistical description of how a large number of particles behave when they are together - it's cold enough and empty enough in momst of space that most molecules are just drifiting along on their own.

Parlyne

If this were the case and there were enough of these to account for the missing mass in our own galaxy, we should expect to see some amount otherwise inexplicable gravitational lensing of light from outside our galaxy. We don't.

FTL_Diesel

Indeed, I think the latest results from the microlensing surveys is that only 25-50% of dark matter can be accounted for by MACHOs.

Garth

It depends on the mass of the individual 'particles'.

If much larger then the dark mass would require fewer of these objects and fewer lensing events would be detected.

If MACHOs do not fit the bill then IMBHs might.

Garth

Parlyne

There would be fewer lensing events; but, wouldn't the lensing in what events there were be stronger?

Garth

They would also be further away on average.

The interpretation of lensing event is model dependent and you have to make certain assumptions about the lensing object that has been detected. Depending on how tightly the parameters are determined there might be a degeneracy in that model in which two different scenarios would yield the same data.

Garth

iantresman

I don't think that's quite right, because "cold plasma" and "hot plasma" have special meanings in plasma physics. For example, the plasma created in a fluorescent light tube is defined as a cold plasma, yet it emits light.(Ref)

Conversely, the Solar Wind is classed as a hot plasma, but as far as I'm aware, produces no light.(Ref) It's not until the Solar Wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, do we get the aurora.

But plasmas are indeed prodigious producers of electromagnetic radiation across the entire spectrum, from radio waves, visible light, to x-rays and gamma rays.

staf9

It's not something I'm well versed on at all, but couldn't dark matter be manipulated into any state of matter?

Parlyne

No. That's the whole point I was making. All of the usual phases of matter other than gas come about because of electromagnetic interactions between the particles. If the particles have no electric charge, they can't interact electromagnetically and, hence, cannot form solids, liquids, or plasmas.

George Jones

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

The theory of Big Bang nucleosynthesis together with measurements of, e.g., the ratio of the primordial density of deuterium to the primordial density of hydrogen put the baryonic (protons and neutrons and their exotic cousins) content of the universe at about 15% of the total matter content of the universe given by standard interpretation of results like those from WMAP.

According to the standard cosmological model, the majority of dark matter is not normal matter.

nikiforos

The theory of Nucleosynthesis is not only a guide to the quantities of cosmic components as George well pointed out, but it also immediately shows that Dark Matter, not only is not baryonic, but it cannot also be made up of Leptons and/or Quarks. This is because with the Standard Model (or other viable alternatives) these states must (by known physics) form familiar baryonic matter (at a certain epoch) unless ad hoc undefined conditions are invoked. This means at the very least, for Dark Matter (DM) the standard “Standard Model” needs “some” modification. Not to push alternative concepts here, BUT, a whole cosmology exists that can define and provide calculated values for diverse topics (from the DE, DM, BM, to the Pioneer Anomaly) that are either, validated, or can be checked by observations. One of the fundamental basis for this cosmology is the definition and details of what is spacetime (continuum) and how it makes the universe expand. A book published in 1984 deals with this general concept of Continuum Creation and Annihilation (CCA). The “creation” part (“chronogenesis” in the book) behaves as the more recently discovered Dark Energy (DE). To compare it with GR, it prevents the Einstein (Ricci) tensor from vanishing. This means that there is no such thing as classical empty space, or “simple” cosmological “constant”. From this (actually CCA insists) the continuum is forced to have an inherent (calculable equivalent mass) energy density (vacuum energy, not of 120 orders of magnitude too large). Another big part for this cosmology is a possible (third family state) candidate for DM (considered over the last 15 yr) that seems to predict observed DM characteristics, but has a couple of very strange (compared to baryonic matter) behaviors.
To come back to Nucleosynthesis, by use of the NASA WMAP inferred age (13.7 x10^9 yr) one can precisely calculate the amount of baryonic matter, then by the above chronogenesis, calculate the equivalent DE contribution. Then by summation (as shown below) calculate the Dark Matter component and that means all the component contributions are defined as shown and can be checked with observations.
The total “critical” density Dt is equal to the sum of component densities of DE (dark energy) and DM (dark matter) and BM (baryonic matter) and (photon) Dcmb (small)
Dt = DE + DM + BM +Dcmb
When all the rather simple math and substitution is done one obtains (details can be provided):
rhoc = rhoDE + (rhoDM + rhoBM)
9.60 x10-30 = 7.0 x10-30 +(2.18 x10-30 + 4.16 x10-31) g-cm-3
For total critical value of (100%)
omega = 100% ~ 72.9% + (22.7% + 4.33%)
and can compared to the graph George has.

delta_moment

Jury's still out on that one...as far as I've looked into it.

The theory I think most plausible is that it's a reaction created by dark energy on matter. That creates a discernible pattern of affect.

It's changed so much from what I once studied, and I don't try to keep up. As, many great Physicists and Theorists are in a ever-changing state on their theories.

I'll wait till the dust settles. Then get back into it.

But, yeah: Right now I'd say it behaves like matter in that it influences motions of visible matter somehow. Like gravity does. Only, it ain't really there. Like matter. But, causes similar behaviors, as matter.

Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you. Only there's too many things that can't be accounted for by visible areas being observed now, that are "REALLY" there.

Maybe optics will provide the answer before the lead of the pencil.

tycon69

Hhhhm... would be cool if it were to include a 5th force.