Related papers: How Dark Matter Came to Matter

Astrophysical observations suggest that most of the matter in the cosmos consists of a new form that has not been observed on Earth. The nature and origin of this mysterious dark matter are among the most pressing questions in fundamental…

In these notes I will briefly summarize our knowledge about the dark matter problem, and emphasize the corresponding dynamical aspects. This covers a wide area of research, so I have been selective, and have concentrated on the subject of…

Cosmology as an exact physical science is of new date, but it has long roots in the past. This essay is concerned with four important themes in the history of cosmological thought which, if taken together, offer a fairly comprehensive…

In this pedestrian approach I give my personal point of view on the various problems posed by dark matter in the universe. After a brief historical overview I discuss the various solutions stemming from high energy particle physics, and the…

The pervasive presence in space of a flux of high-speed, electrically uncharged dark matter particles is examined here for potential consequences. Dark matter interactions with ordinary matter are considered, and a model of the dark matter…

We discuss arguments both in favor of and against dark matter. With the repeated failure of experiment to date to detect dark matter we discuss what could be done instead, and to this end look for clues in the data themselves. We identify…

It is suggested that the apparently disparate cosmological phenomena attributed to so-called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' arise from the same fundamental physical process: the emergence, from the quantum level, of spacetime itself. This…

The search for dark matter is a very wide and active field of research. Many potential hints of dark matter have appeared recently which led to a burst of theoretical activity and model building. I necessarily concentrate here only in some…

The presence of Dark Matter (DM) is required in the universe regulated by the standard general relativistic theory of gravitation. The nature of DM is however still elusive to any experimental search. We discuss here the process of…

While astrophysical and cosmological probes provide a remarkably precise and consistent picture of the quantity and general properties of dark matter, its fundamental nature remains one of the most significant open questions in physics.…

One of the great scientific enigmas still unsolved, the existence of dark matter, is reviewed. Simple gravitational arguments imply that most of the mass in the Universe, at least 90%, is some (unknown) non-luminous matter. Some particle…

Well known scaling laws among the structural properties of the dark and the luminous matter in disc systems are too complex to be arisen by two inert components that just share the same gravitational field. This brings us to critically…

In recent years, the hope to confirm the existence of dark matter by experimentally detecting it has diminished significantly. After more than 30 years of experimental searches, many of the most promising candidates have since been ruled…

One of the greatest mysteries in astrophysics and cosmology is the nature and the origin of cold dark matter, which represents more than 84% of the mass in the universe. Dark matter reacts on and produces gravitational forces and governs…

The origin of dark matter in the universe may be weakly interacting scalar particles produced by amplification of quantum fluctuations during a period of dilaton-driven inflation. We present two interesting cases, the case of small…

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…

To the astrophysicist faced with the puzzle of dark matter, this one appears under two different aspects: on the one hand in cosmology, i.e. at very large scales, where it seems to be made of a bath of particles; on the other hand at the…

We consider two problems that have vexed physicists for several decades -- dark matter and the cosmological constant. The problem has been that the former has not been detected while the latter gives a far higher value than detected by…

The evidence for the dark matter of the hot big bang cosmology is about as good as it gets in natural science. The exploration of its nature is now led by direct and indirect detection experiments, to be complemented by advances in the full…

The nature of dark matter and the origin of the baryon asymmetry are two of the deepest mysteries of modern particle physics. In the absence of hints regarding a possible solution to these mysteries, many approaches have been developed to…