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Nucleosynthesis

Dailycurrentscience305 Aug, 2022Science

An artist's interpretation of big bang nucleosynthesis, the period in the early universe when protons "p" and neutrons "n" combine to form light elements. The presence of dark matter "" alters the amount of each element that forms. Cara Giovanetti/New York University provided the image. A group of physicists has developed a method for predicting the composition of dark matter, which is invisible and can only be detected by its gravitational pull on ordinary matter and has long been sought after by scientists. Its research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, focuses on predicting "cosmological signatures" for dark matter models with masses between that of the electron and the proton. Previous methods predicted similar signatures for simpler dark matter models. According to the paper's authors, this research establishes new ways to find these signatures in more complex models, which experiments are still looking for.