How JWST places the squeeze on mild darkish matter, without cost | by Ethan Siegel | Begins With A Bang! | Mar, 2025
One of the promising darkish matter candidates are mild particles, like axions. With JWST, we are able to rule out a lot of these choices already.
All all through the Universe, there’s an enormous puzzle whose answer stays unknown: the darkish matter thriller. Inside each massive, high-mass system that we study, together with:
- spiral galaxies,
- elliptical galaxies,
- teams of galaxies,
- clusters of galaxies,
- cosmic filaments,
- and the large-scale cosmic internet,
there merely isn’t sufficient regular matter to elucidate the gravitational indicators we observe. From the inner motions of galaxies to the relative motions of galaxies inside a cluster to the gravitational lensing indicators generated by these objects to the clustering patterns of galaxies on the most important of cosmic scales, some novel kind of mass that neither absorbs nor emits mild — darkish matter — should be current to persistently clarify what we observe.
And but, all of our efforts to immediately detect darkish matter have come up empty, with key indicators from particle colliders, cosmic ray experiments, and attainable signatures of…
