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Space Science

New Cosmological Model Proposes Dark Matter Production During Pre-Big Bang Inflation (phys.org) 44

To explain the origins of dark market, a new model of the universe has been proposed by researchers, reports Phys.org.

"Their idea is that dark matter would be produced during a infinitesimally short inflationary phase when the size of the universe quickly expanded exponentially..." Although inflation is mostly accepted by cosmologists as part of the Big Bang picture based on some evidence (though there is meaningful dissent), the driver of inflation is still unknown... [T]o-date research has not considered the possibility that a significant [amount] of dark matter could be produced during the inflationary expansion and not be diluted away. In the paper's WIFI model — Warm Inflation via ultraviolet Freeze-In — dark matter is created through small and rare interactions with particles in a hot, energetic environment. It contains a new mechanism where this production occurs just before the Big Bang, during cosmic inflation, leading to dark matter being formed much earlier than in existing theories...

"The thing that's unique to our model is that dark matter is successfully produced during inflation," said Katherine Freese, Director of the Weinberg Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Texas Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics at The University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the paper. "In most [other] models, anything that is created during inflation is then 'inflated away' by the exponential expansion of the universe, to the point where there is essentially nothing left." In this new mechanism, all the dark matter that we observe today could have been created during that brief, pre-Big Bang period of inflation. The quantum field driving inflation, the inflation, loses some of its energy to radiation, and this radiation, in turn, produces dark matter particles via the freeze-in mechanism....

The WIFI [Warm Inflation via ultraviolet Freeze-In] model cannot yet be confirmed by observations. But a key part of the scenario, warm inflation, will be tested over the next decade by the so-called cosmic microwave background experiments. Confirming warm inflation would be a significant step for the WIFI model's dark matter production scenario.

"What was before inflation? Physicists have no idea."

New Cosmological Model Proposes Dark Matter Production During Pre-Big Bang Inflation

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  • Sheeshes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )
    I'll take things that cannot be disproven therefore not science for 500, Bob!

    Turtles all the way down is at least disprovable.

    Religion just like string theory

    • Re:Sheeshes (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Saturday November 30, 2024 @04:40PM (#64981895) Homepage

      I'll take things that cannot be disproven therefore not science for 500, Bob!

      What about things that cannot be disproven yet?

      • I'll take things that cannot be disproven therefore not science for 500, Bob!

        What about things that cannot be disproven yet?

        If we can prove that there was a pre-big bang, with inflation and dark matter created by UV freexe in, and did not distribute like everything else, and what exactly happened, that would be pretty cool and exciting.

        FTS:The quantum field driving inflation, the inflation, loses some of its energy to radiation, and this radiation, in turn, produces dark matter particles via the freeze-in mechanism..." But even if this UV freeze-in happens, we still have to determine that it happened before the BB.

        I'm re

      • I'll take things that cannot be disproven therefore not science for 500, Bob!

        What about things that cannot be disproven yet?

        Are you seriously trying to troll slashdot on falsifiability? Fine, I'll bite. fwiw, I hear this question *a lot* from Jesuits who have an axe to grind with Karl Popper. :) Falsifiability isn’t about whether we can disprove a theory right now but whether we can conceive of a way to disprove it in principle. Even if we lack the technology or knowledge to test something today, a theory remains scientific as long as it’s theoretically testable. gravitational waves were predicted long before we co

    • Re:Sheeshes (Score:5, Informative)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Saturday November 30, 2024 @04:43PM (#64981901)

      Literally included in the summary

      But a key part of the scenario, warm inflation, will be tested over the next decade by the so-called cosmic microwave background experiments.

      If they disprove warm inflation this theory fails. That's actual science.

      • True, but if they find warm inflation then we are stuck with a model that, barring any brilliant ideas, is about as testable as string theory given that the mechanism engages during inflation which is around the Planck-scale.

        We have to consider these sorts of models because we still have no clue what Dark Matter is but if this is how the universe works we are likely not going to figure out Dark Matter for a very long time.
    • Re:Sheeshes (Score:5, Informative)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Saturday November 30, 2024 @04:49PM (#64981917)

      Science is a process, every testable theory started as an idea that was not and a hypothesis not testable, or not yet testable, is not the same as "turtles all the way down".

      You know, all that science is done by people, right? That's how ideas become testable. Your closed-mindedness is no different than the religious that you mock.

      • Re: Sheeshes (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Albinoman ( 584294 ) on Saturday November 30, 2024 @06:10PM (#64982105)
        The point that they are making is that we don't know the Big Bang happened, it just appears that way. Dark matter itself is just a placeholder for unexplained gravity (should be called Dark Gravity). So now we have a placeholder phenomenon being explained to include a theory that says anything before it is not only unknowable, but time itself starts at it's beginning. So all this happened before time itself, before before could exist as we understand it. They might as well say a wizard did it. This is just more just wasted chasing equations like string theory. Figure out what dark matter is first then figure out how it got there, what it's from.
        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          There's no way you can prove you're not a Boltzman brain that popped into existence a picosencond ago, hallucinated the universe and all of its history, and is about to either pop out of existence again or explode into the void.

          Some assumptions are necessary.

          And no, this didn't happen "before time existed!!" They're talking about pre-inflation. Time definitely existed. Inflation is generally referred to these days as "the big bang" because, if true, it was, but it's not the "big bang" you're probably thinki

          • Time definitely existed. Inflation is generally referred to these days as "the big bang" because, if true, it was, but it's not the "big bang" you're probably thinking of.

            That big bang was with the chick I took to senior prom.

          • Remember that at the moment of the Big Bang the universe is a singularity, dimensionless. Time is also one of those dimensions that expanded into existence. There could be time "before" but it's irrelevant. Because the entire universe was a single point it can carry no information through. What happens before that cannot affect what happens after. This has been the theory for a very, very long time now. Now these researchers come along and say dark matter is a super special exception to something almost eve
            • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              That's not the big bang they're talking about. The original concept doesn't fit observations. For the last 30 or 40 years when a cosmologist says "big bang" they mean inflation. Time most certainly did exist before, in some models infinitely.

        • Dark matter itself is just a placeholder for unexplained gravity

          Yes, dark matter is an unfortunate name, with most people believing it is matter.

        • Re: Sheeshes (Score:4, Informative)

          by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @03:16AM (#64982703) Journal

          The point that they are making is that we don't know the Big Bang happened, it just appears that way.

          We do know that the Big Bang happened because there is a preponderance of evidence all consistent with the Big Bang model. We do not know all the details of what happened very early on - it seems that inflation is needed to blow up the quantum fluctuarions to the size we need for the universe to look like it does but that part of the model is extremely hazy since we have no clue what drove inflation nor do we understand space-time on the quantum scale.

          It's also worth pointing out that we are not entirely sure that time was created in the Big Bang too - it is possible ithat time may have existed prior to the Big Bang and that the Big Bang only created space. Indeed, if time were created in the Big Bang then technically there was no "before". However, this model has DM created after the Big Bang, just much earlier on than we have previously considered.

      • Science is a process, every testable theory started as an idea that was not and a hypothesis not testable, or not yet testable, is not the same as "turtles all the way down".

        Wut? Here's where you go off the rails. This is like the guy who comes into the discussion who demands that everyone prove everything all over again because they don't believe it.

        If you or I have a hypothesis, we need to frame it. If it can be framed as a falsifiable idea, it can be tested. If itcannot be tested, it cannot be science.

        If I say That I can prove that Ganesha exists, I need to come up with a way to show that. And just because Ganesha is the coolest god ever, and that many people believe i

    • by 0xG ( 712423 )

      I'll take things that cannot be disproven therefore not science for 500, Bob!

      I'll take prof reding for a thosand!

  • This might be called "Dork Matter"
  • by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Saturday November 30, 2024 @04:56PM (#64981931) Homepage

    To explain the origins of dark market, a new model of the universe has been proposed by researchers, reports Phys.org.

    Is the dark market the site on the dark web where you buy dark matter using cryptocurrency?

  • Ask an economist: 'Overexpansion of the money supply'.

    Obvious, really... ;)

  • These guys are just trying to imagine a physically explainable solution for the dark matter problem. The only question for me is 'is it an interesting one'.

    "The quantum field driving inflation, the inflation, loses some of its energy to radiation, and this radiation, in turn, produces dark matter particles via the freeze-in mechanism"

    Which is then described some in the phys.org article;
    'dark matter was produced through its interaction with a thermal bath of some species, and its abundance is created by "fre

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday November 30, 2024 @07:14PM (#64982249)

    It seems to me like they're using "Big Bang" in a somewhat unusual manner. I thought at first they were claiming that this dark matter production had somehow happened before the Big Bang Singularity, but they appear overall to be sticking to the accepted model of the earliest moments of the universe... and using "big bang" to only refer to that period of rapid expansion that occurred after inflation.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Since inflation became generally accepted, "big bang" usually refers to it. You're correct, it's not the same as the layman's "big bang" which is basically Lematire's 1930 "primeval atom" expanding into the universe. Lemaitre's simple version doesn't match observations.

    • Do you remember the theory of luminiferous ether ? Dark matter will join it, one day....
  • To explain the origins of dark market, a new model of the universe has been proposed by researchers

    Dark matter and the inflationary universe are signs there are major defects in the current model.

    a. The universe sprang into being from a single singularity 13.8 billion years ago.

    b. Given (a) then the inflationary universe was proposed to account for the uniformity of the universe over large scales.

    c. Given (a) and (b), dark matter was proposed to account for the rotation speed of ga
  • "What was before inflation? Physicists have no idea."

    Uh, what “idea” do we think physicists really have after inflation?

    Instead of an entire highly-educated community admitting that same truth, they instead created a term to give the illusion that they had a clue, or do today.

    Dark Matter - The marketing term used to describe when you have no fucking idea what it is, but you still want to get funding and a paycheck in perpetuity.

    Let the modding down of truth begin.

  • by jd ( 1658 )

    There are oddities about the early universe that are easier to explain if we assume Dark Matter and Dark Energy do not originate in the same event as ordinary matter. We can then explain all discrepancies and observations, even with "impossible" super-scale structures in the universe without any obvious difficulty.

    In order for this new model to be useful, it must not merely explain the same observations, it must do so significantly better.

  • Dark Matter fails to explain the orbital dynamics of Proxima Centauri. Our closest celestial neighbors are very observable. Quantized Inertia defeats Dark Matter again and again. Sometimes you will see articles referencing MOND as defeating Dark Matter, and MOND is a step in the right direction but it has too many unexplained constants and weak theoretical underpinnings and doesn't stack up against QI in predictive versus observed. https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/532/1/L67/7682393

  • Indeed there is no shortage of theories in the dark market for dark matter theories.

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