Related papers: Dark Matter as a Trigger for Periodic Comet Impact…
Within the dark matter paradigm, explaining observed orbital dynamics at galactic level through the inclusion of a dominant dark halo, implies also the necessary appearance of dynamical friction effects. Satellite galaxies, globular…
We investigate the effect of a dark matter caustic passing through the Solar System. We find, confirming a previous result, that the Sun tracks the caustic surface for some time. We integrate numerically the equations of motion of the Sun…
The diffuse galactic EGRET gamma ray data show a clear excess for energies above 1 GeV in comparison with the expectations from conventional galactic models. The excess is seen with the same spectrum in all sky directions, as expected for…
The positron excess in cosmic rays has stimulated a lot of interests in the last decade. The dark matter origin of the extra positrons has attracted great attention. However, the $\gamma$-ray search set very stringent constraints on the…
We study the possibility of identifying dark matter in the galactic center from the physical properties of the electromagnetic radiation emitted from a optical-thin disk region around a static and spherically symmetric black hole. In…
The existence of dark matter in the Galactic disk has been a topic of significant debate, especially over the past two decades. Evidence for dark matter in the disk, a component in addition to the now well-proven dark matter halo, has been…
The Oort cloud is thought to be a reservoir of icy planetesimals and the source of long-period comets (LPCs) implanted from the outer Solar System during the time of giant planet formation. The abundance of rocky ice-free bodies is a key…
Using a recent geochemical reconstruction of the Phanerozoic climate which exhibits a 32 Ma oscillation with a phase and the secondary modulation expected from the vertical the motion of the solar system perpendicular to the galactic plane…
The absolute magnitude and perihelion distributions of long-period comets are derived, using data from the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey. The results are surprising in three ways. Firstly, the flux of comets through…
Mirror matter is an entirely new form of matter predicted to exist if mirror symmetry is a fundamental symmetry of nature. Mirror matter has the right broad properties to explain the inferred dark matter of the Universe and might also be…
I find evidence for clustering in age of well-dated impact craters over the last 500 Myr. At least nine impact episodes are identified, with durations whose upper limits are set by the dating accuracy of the craters. Their amplitudes and…
ALMA surveys have suggested that the dust in Class II disks may not be enough to explain the averaged solid mass in exoplanets, under the assumption that the mm disk continuum emission is optically thin. This optically thin assumption seems…
Transitional and pre--transitional disks can be explained by a number of mechanisms. This work aims to find a single observationally detectable marker that would imply a planetary origin for the gap and, therefore, indirectly indicate the…
This thesis assesses the influence of astronomical phenomena on the Earth's biosphere and climate. I examine in particular the relevance of both the path of the Sun through the Galaxy and the evolution of the Earth's orbital parameters in…
A dark matter overdensity around a black hole may significantly alter the dynamics of the black hole's merger with another compact object. We consider here intermediate mass-ratio inspirals of stellar-mass compact objects with…
For the past forty years the search for dark matter has been one of the primary foci of astrophysics, although there has yet to be any direct evidence for its existence (Porter et al. 2011). Indirect evidence for the existence of dark…
The ubiquitous presence of dark matter in the universe is today a central tenet in modern cosmology and astrophysics. Ranging from the smallest galaxies to the observable universe, the evidence for dark matter is compelling in dwarfs,…
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…
It has been suggested for a long time that dark matter would form a density spike around a black hole. However, no promising evidence has been observed so far to verify this theoretical suggestion. Here, we report the existence of a dark…
It has previously been shown that the excess of events reported by the CoGeNT collaboration could be generated by elastically scattering dark matter particles with a mass of approximately 5-15 GeV. This mass range is very similar to that…