this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
107 points (92.1% liked)
science
14995 readers
541 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.
2024-11-11
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
One of the things with dark matter (specifically WIMPs, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) is that they don't seem to interact with any force other than gravity. This means they can shed momentum, by interacting with each other, or normal matter. In order for a dense object to form from a cloud, the cloud, as a whole, must shed, or cancel out the momentum of the particles involved. WIMPs would not be able to do this via anything other than gravity. This limits their collapse to around galaxy scale.
In short WIMPs can't form anything more complex than an incredibly diffuse inert gas cloud. We can only detect those clouds on a galactic scale, via their gravity effect.
Damn. So no totally dark motorcycle then. Ah well
WIMP is such a great acronym for those lol