2023-07-19 04:00:09
An international team of cosmologists has made an astonishing discovery: studying the gravitational waves produced by merging black holes could reveal the true nature of dark matter. Dr Alex Jenkins of University College London and his team shared these findings at the National Congress ofAstronomy 2023. Merger of two black holes similar to those detected by LIGO. Black holes rotate in a non-aligned fashion, which means that they have different orientations with respect to the overall torque orbital motion. LIGO has found clues that at least one black hole of the system called GW170104 was out of alignment with its orbital motion before merging with its partner.
Credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT.
Dark matter is a real mystery. Despite the strong evidence of its existence, which is said to represent 85% of all matter of the’Universe, its nature remains unknown. Scientists wonder if dark matter particles can enter collision with other particles, such as atoms or neutrinos, or if they pass through them without effect.
To answer this question, cosmologists used computer simulations. They studied the production of gravitational waves in simulated universes with different types of dark matter. Their results show that it would be possible to determine whether dark matter interacts with other particles by counting the name of black hole mergers detected by future observatories.
The study of gravitational waves would thus shed light on the mysterious nature of dark matter. These waves could be used to indirectly quantify the “missing galaxies”. If dark matter collided with neutrinos, the dark matter structure would disperse, resulting in fewer galaxies forming.
The study of dark matter via gravitational waves could therefore be a promising avenue for the next generations of observatories. The team hopes their method will stimulate new ideas for using gravitational wave data to explore structure at large scale of the universe.
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