Related papers: Dark Matter And The Habitability of Planets
Dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles is predicted to become gravitationally captured and accumulate in stars. While the subsequent annihilations of such particles lead to the injection of energy into stellar…
Dark matter heating in planets has been proposed as a potential probe for dark matter detection. Assuming near-equilibrium conditions, we find that the energy input from dark matter raises planetary temperatures and accelerates rotation.…
Dark matter particles may be captured by a star and then thermalized in the star's core. At the end of its life a massive star collapses suddenly and a compact object is formed. The dark matter particles redistribute accordingly. In the…
If dark matter is efficiently captured by a planet, energy released in its annihilation can exceed that planet's total heat output. Building on prior work, we treat Earth's composition and dark matter capture in detail and present improved…
The astronomical dark matter is an essential component of the Universe and yet its nature is still unresolved. It could be made of neutral and massive elementary particles which are their own antimatter partners. These dark matter species…
Dark Matter in Earth intersecting orbits can scatter off the electrons and lose energy, and finally be gravitationally bound to Earth. Eventually they lose enough energy and accumulate at the core. It is assumed that DM annihilates/decays…
Progress in observational cosmology over the past five years has established that the Universe is dominated dynamically by dark matter and dark energy. Both these new and apparently independent forms of matter-energy have properties that…
Dark matter can be captured by celestial objects and accumulate at their centers, forming a core of dark matter that can collapse to a small black hole, provided that the annihilation rate is small or zero. If the nascent black hole is big…
Dark matter particles can form halos gravitationally bound to massive astrophysical objects. The Earth could have such a halo where depending on the particle mass, the halo either extends beyond the surface or is confined to the Earth's…
Dark matter (DM) can be captured in celestial bodies after scattering and losing sufficient energy to become gravitationally bound. We derive a general framework that describes the current DM distribution inside celestial objects, which…
The annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles can provide an important heat source for the first (Pop. III) stars, potentially leading to a new phase of stellar evolution known as a "Dark Star". When dark matter (DM) capture via…
I review constraints on solar system-bound dark matter, and discuss the possibility that dark matter could be gravitationally bound to the earth and other planets. I briefly survey various empirical constraints on such planet-bound dark…
A sub-component of dark matter with a short collision length compared to a planetary size leads to efficient accumulation of dark matter in astrophysical bodies. We analyze possible neutrino signals from the annihilation of such dark matter…
We consider a feeble repulsive interaction between ordinary matter and dark matter, with a range similar to or larger than the size of the Earth. Dark matter can thus be repelled from the Earth, leading to null results in direct detection…
Dark matter, proposed decades ago as a speculative component of the universe, is now known to be the vital ingredient in the cosmos, eight times more abundant than ordinary matter, one quarter of the total energy density and the component…
We explore the possibility that exotic forms of dark matter could expose humans on Earth or on prolonged space travel to a significant radiation dose. The radiation exposure from dark matter interacting with nuclei in the human body is…
We discuss an overlooked factor in dark matter studies. Namely, if massless particles are captured into a local structure and stop free streaming in the universe, they no longer lose energy by cosmological red-shift, and no longer smear out…
Observations of density profiles of galaxies and clusters constrain the properties of dark matter. Formation of stable halos by collisional fluids with very low mass particles appears as the most probable interpretation, while halos formed…
Astronomical and cosmological observations of the past 80 years build solid evidence that atomic matter makes up only a small fraction of the matter in the universe. The dominant fraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation,…
The evolution of dark matter in central areas of galaxies is considered (the Milky Way is taken as an example). It is driven by scattering off of dark matter particles by bulge stars, their absorption by the supermassive black hole and…