Stars, Cells, and God No Sign of Dark Photons | News of the Day
Oct 16, 2024
13:05
Join Hugh Ross in this breaking News of the Day episode of Stars, Cells, and God. Hugh describes a search for dark photons, a candidate for comprising a large fraction of the universe’s dark matter. The search consisted of comparing a detailed map of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) with a catalog of more than 500 million galaxies.
- Dark matter makes up 24.5% of the universe.
- Probability of ordinary photons from the CMBR morphing into dark photons peaks when they pass through the plasma of electrons surrounding galaxy clusters.
- Loss of CMBR photons will be correlated with galaxy cluster positions and would make the CMBR map look more splotchy.
- The search team accounted for other effects known to distort the CMBR map.
- The search team found no evidence for dark photons. They placed an upper limit on dark photon contribution to dark matter more than 10 times lower than previous analyses.
- Future comparisons of the CMBR map with positions of denser, older galaxies will yield more stringent limits on dark photons.
- Axions remain as the leading candidate particles to comprise the majority of the universe’s dark matter.
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