<h2>What Is the Dark Matter We See Indirectly?</h2>
There is no doubt that dark matter exists, but its form and the amount in existence are two facts that are still being studied vigorously. As always, we seek to explain new observations in terms of known principles. However, as more discoveries are made, it is becoming more and more difficult to explain dark matter as a known type of matter.
One of the possibilities for normal matter is being explored using the Hubble Space Telescope and employing the lensing effect of gravity on light (see <a href="#navlink_id1169737718755">this figure</a>). Stars glow because of nuclear fusion in them, but planets are visible primarily by reflected light. Jupiter, for example, is too small to ignite fusion in its core and become a star, but we can see sunlight reflected from it, since we are relatively close. If Jupiter orbited another star, we would not be able to see it directly. The question is open as to how many planets or other bodies smaller than about 1/1000 the mass of the Sun are there. If such bodies pass between us and a star, they will not block the star’s light, being too small, but they will form a gravitational lens, as discussed in <a data-lesson="#general_relativity_and_quantum_gravity" data-page="274" data-subject="physics" data-tutorial="frontiers-of-physics" href="https://app.ulearngo.com/physics/frontiers-of-physics/#general_relativity_and_quantum_gravity">General Relativity and Quantum Gravity</a>.
In a process called microlensing, light from the star is focused and the star appears to brighten in a characteristic manner. Searches for dark matter in this form are particularly interested in galactic halos because of the huge amount of mass that seems to be there. Such microlensing objects are thus called massive compact halo objects, or MACHOs. To date, a few MACHOs have been observed, but not predominantly in galactic halos, nor in the numbers needed to explain dark matter.
MACHOs are among the most conventional of unseen objects proposed to explain dark matter. Others being actively pursued are red dwarfs, which are small dim stars, but too few have been seen so far, even with the Hubble Telescope, to be of significance. Old remnants of stars called white dwarfs are also under consideration, since they contain about a solar mass, but are small as the Earth and may dim to the point that we ordinarily do not observe them. While white dwarfs are known, old dim ones are not. Yet another possibility is the existence of large numbers of smaller than stellar mass black holes left from the Big Bang—here evidence is entirely absent.
There is a very real possibility that dark matter is composed of the known neutrinos, which may have small, but finite, masses. As discussed earlier, neutrinos are thought to be massless, but we only have upper limits on their masses, rather than knowing they are exactly zero. So far, these upper limits come from difficult measurements of total energy emitted in the decays and reactions in which neutrinos are involved. There is an amusing possibility of proving that neutrinos have mass in a completely different way.
We have noted in <a data-lesson="particles-patterns-and-conservation-laws" data-page="269" data-subject="physics" data-tutorial="particle-physics" href="https://app.ulearngo.com/physics/particle-physics/particles-patterns-and-conservation-laws">Particles, Patterns, and Conservation Laws</a> that there are three flavors of neutrinos (\({\nu }_{e}\), \({v}_{\mu }\), and \({v}_{\tau }\)) and that the weak interaction could change quark flavor. It should also change neutrino flavor—that is, any type of neutrino could change spontaneously into any other, a process called neutrino oscillations. However, this can occur only if neutrinos have a mass. Why? Crudely, because if neutrinos are massless, they must travel at the speed of light and time will not pass for them, so that they cannot change without an interaction. In 1999, results began to be published containing convincing evidence that neutrino oscillations do occur. Using the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan, the oscillations have been observed and are being verified and further explored at present at the same facility and others.
Neutrino oscillations may also explain the low number of observed solar neutrinos. Detectors for observing solar neutrinos are specifically designed to detect electron neutrinos \({\nu }_{e}\) produced in huge numbers by fusion in the Sun. A large fraction of electron neutrinos \({\nu }_{e}\) may be changing flavor to muon neutrinos \({v}_{\mu }\) on their way out of the Sun, possibly enhanced by specific interactions, reducing the flux of electron neutrinos to observed levels. There is also a discrepancy in observations of neutrinos produced in cosmic ray showers. While these showers of radiation produced by extremely energetic cosmic rays should contain twice as many \({v}_{\mu }\) s as \({\nu }_{e}\) s, their numbers are nearly equal. This may be explained by neutrino oscillations from muon flavor to electron flavor. Massive neutrinos are a particularly appealing possibility for explaining dark matter, since their existence is consistent with a large body of known information and explains more than dark matter. The question is not settled at this writing.
The most radical proposal to explain dark matter is that it consists of previously unknown leptons (sometimes obtusely referred to as non-baryonic matter). These are called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, and would also be chargeless, thus interacting negligibly with normal matter, except through gravitation. One proposed group of WIMPs would have masses several orders of magnitude greater than nucleons and are sometimes called neutralinos. Others are called axions and would have masses about \({\text{10}}^{-\text{10}}\) that of an electron mass. Both neutralinos and axions would be gravitationally attached to galaxies, but because they are chargeless and only feel the weak force, they would be in a halo rather than interact and coalesce into spirals, and so on, like normal matter (see <a href="#navlink_id1169737965740">this figure</a>).
<div class="fig_container" id="navlink_id1169737718755"><img alt="The figure shows a satellite in orbit above the glowing atmosphere of the Earth. The satellite is tube shaped and has a cover that is open at one end. It has two solar panels and is covered in what looks like aluminum foil." src="https://data.ulearngo.com/assets/b0361d53-a56f-4f0b-b197-1d46fed15ae4"/>
The Hubble Space Telescope is producing exciting data with its corrected optics and with the absence of atmospheric distortion. It has observed some MACHOs, disks of material around stars thought to precede planet formation, black hole candidates, and collisions of comets with Jupiter. (credit: NASA (crew of STS-125))
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<div class="fig_container" id="navlink_id1169737965740"><img alt="A close-up photograph of a slow-moving stream carrying leaves." src="https://data.ulearngo.com/assets/c54c058e-39f4-4cb3-8a13-b763023a3a76"/>
Dark matter may shepherd normal matter gravitationally in space, as this stream moves the leaves. Dark matter may be invisible and even move through the normal matter, as neutrinos penetrate us without small-scale effect. (credit: Shinichi Sugiyama)
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Some particle theorists have built WIMPs into their unified force theories and into the inflationary scenario of the evolution of the universe so popular today. These particles would have been produced in just the correct numbers to make the universe flat, shortly after the Big Bang. The proposal is radical in the sense that it invokes entirely new forms of matter, in fact two entirely new forms, in order to explain dark matter and other phenomena. WIMPs have the extra burden of automatically being very difficult to observe directly. This is somewhat analogous to quark confinement, which guarantees that quarks are there, but they can never be seen directly. One of the primary goals of the LHC at CERN, however, is to produce and detect WIMPs. At any rate, before WIMPs are accepted as the best explanation, all other possibilities utilizing known phenomena will have to be shown inferior. Should that occur, we will be in the unanticipated position of admitting that, to date, all we know is only 10% of what exists. A far cry from the days when people firmly believed themselves to be not only the center of the universe, but also the reason for its existence.

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What is the Dark Matter We See Indirectly?

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What is the Dark Matter We See Indirectly?

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