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What Is Dark Matter?

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What Is Dark Matter? THE BIGGEST QUESTIONS IN SCIENCE cle, does it have any (albeit very weak) in- teraction with familiar matter, aside from What Is gravity? Does that particle have any inter- actions with itself that would be invisible to Dark Matter? our senses? Is there more than one type graphic principle not just to black holes but also to the universe at of such a particle? Do any of these parti- large, providing a recipe for how to create space—or at least some of it. cles have interactions of any sort? An elusive substance that For instance, a two-dimensional space could be threaded by fields that, My theoretical colleagues and I have per meates the universe when structured in the right way, generate an additional dimension of thought about a number of interesting pos- space. The original two-dimensional space would serve as the bound- exerts many detectable sibilities. Ultimately, however, we will learn ary of a more expansive realm, known as the bulk space. And entangle- gravitational influences yet about the true nature of dark matter only ment is what knits the bulk space into a contiguous whole. eludes direct detection with the help of further observations to In 2009 Mark Van Raamsdonk of the University of British Co- By Lisa Randall guide us. Those observations might con- lumbia gave an elegant argument for this process. Suppose the fields at sist of more detailed measurements of the boundary are not entangled— they form a pair of uncorrelated Physicists and astronomers have deter- dark matter’s gravitational influence. Or— systems. They correspond to two separate universes, with no way to mined that most of the material in the uni- if we are very lucky and dark matter does travel between them. When the systems become entangled, it is as if a verse is “dark matter”— whose existence have some tiny, nongravitational interaction tunnel, or wormhole, opens up between those universes, and a space- we infer from its gravitational effects but with ordinary matter we have so far failed ship can go from one to the other. As the degree of entanglement in- not through electromagnetic influences to observe—big underground detectors, creases, the wormhole shrinks in length, drawing the universes together such as we find with ordinary, familiar mat- satellites in space or the Large Hadron Col- until you would not even speak of them as two universes anymore. ter. One of the simplest concepts in phys- lider at CERN near Geneva might in the fu- “The emergence of a big spacetime is directly tied into the entangling ics, dark matter can nonetheless be mys- ture detect dark matter particles. Even with- of these field theory degrees of freedom,” Van Raamsdonk says. When tifying because of our human perspective. out such interactions with ordinary matter, we observe correlations in the electromagnetic and other fields, they Each of us has five senses, all of which dark matter’s self-interactions might have are a residue of the entanglement that binds space together. originate in electro magnetic interactions. observable consequences. For example, Many other features of space, besides its contiguity, may also re- Vision, for example, is based on our sensi- the internal structure of galaxies at small flect entanglement. Van Raamsdonk and Brian Swingle, now at the tivity to light: electromagnetic waves that scales will be different if dark matter’s in- University of Maryland, College Park, argue that the ubiquity of en- lie within a specific range of frequencies. teractions with itself rearrange matter at tanglement explains the universality of gravity—that it affects all ob- We can see the matter with which we are galactic centers. Compact or other struc- jects and cannot be screened out. As for black holes, Leonard Susskind familiar because the atoms that make it up tures akin to the Milky Way, such as the of Stanford University and Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Ad- emit or absorb light. The electric charges bright gas clouds and stars we see when vanced Study in Princeton, N.J., suggest that entanglement between a carried by the electrons and protons in we look at the night sky, could indicate one black hole and the radiation it has emitted creates a wormhole—a atoms are the reason we can see. or more distinct species of dark matter back-door entrance into the hole. That may help preserve information Matter is not necessarily composed tories of visible matter from supernova formed in the time since the big bang only particles that interact with one another. Or and ensure that black hole physics is reversible. of atoms, however. Most of it can be made expansions; the bending of light known as because of the existence of dark matter. hypothesized particles called axions that Whereas these string theory ideas work only for specific geometries of something entirely distinct. Matter is any gravita tional lensing; and the observation Some people, on first hearing about interact with magnetic fields might be de- and reconstruct only a single dimension of space, some researchers material that interacts with gravity as nor- that the visible and invisible matter gets dark matter, feel dismayed. How can some- tected in laboratories or in space. have sought to explain how all of space can emerge from scratch. For mal matter does—becoming clumped into separated in merged galaxy clusters. thing we do not see exist? At least since For a theorist, an observer or an experi- instance, ChunJun Cao, Spyridon Michalakis and Sean M. Carroll, galaxies and galaxy clusters, for example. Perhaps the most significant sign of the the Copernican revolution, humans should mentalist, dark matter is a promising target all at the California Institute of Technology, begin with a minimalist There is no reason that matter must al- existence of dark matter, however, is our be prepared to admit their noncentrality to for research. We know it exists, but we do quantum description of a system, formulated with no direct reference ways consist of charged particles. But mat- very existence. Despite its invisibility, dark the makeup of the universe. Yet each time not yet know what it is at a fundamental to spacetime or even to matter. If it has the right pattern of correla- ter that has no electromagnetic interac- matter has been critical to the evolu tion people learn about it in a new context, level. The reason we do not know might be tions, the system can be cleaved into component parts that can be tions will be invisible to our eyes. So-called of our universe and to the emergence of many get confused or surprised. There is obvious by now: it is just not interacting identified as different regions of spacetime. In this model, the degree dark matter carries no (or as yet undetec- stars, planets and even life. That is because no reason that the matter we see should enough to tell us, at least so far. As hu- of entanglement defines a notion of spatial distance. tably little) electromagnetic charge. No one dark matter carries five times the mass of be the only type of matter there is. The ex- mans, we can only do so much if ordinary In physics and, more generally, in the natural sciences, space and has seen it directly with his or her eyes or ordinary matter and, furthermore, does not istence of dark matter might be expected matter is essentially oblivious to anything time are the foundation of all theories. Yet we never see spacetime di- even with sensitive optical instruments. directly interact with light. Both these prop- and is compatible with everything we know. but dark matter’s very existence. But if dark rectly. Rather we infer its existence from our everyday experience. We Yet we believe it is out there because of its erties were critical to the creation of struc- Perhaps some confusion lies in the matter has some more interesting proper- assume that the most economical account of the phenomena we see is manifold gravi ta tional influences. These tures such as galaxies—within the (rela- name. Dark matter should really be called ties, researchers are poised to find them— some mechanism that operates within spacetime. But the bottom-line include dark matter’s impact on the stars tively short) time span we know to be a typ- trans parent matter because, as with all and, in the process, to help us more com- lesson of quantum gravity is that not all phenomena neatly fit within in our galaxy (which revolve at speeds too ical galaxy lifetime—and, in particular, to trans parent things, light just passes through pletely address this wonderful mystery. spacetime. Physicists will need to find some new foundational struc- great for ordinary matter’s gravitational the formation of a galaxy the size of the it. Nevertheless, its nature is far from trans- ture, and when they do, they will have completed the revolution that force to rein in) and the motions of galax- Milky Way. Without dark matter, radiation parent. Physicists and astronomers would Lisa Randall is Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor began just more than a century ago with Einstein. ies in galaxy clusters (again, too fast to be would have prevented clumping of the like to understand, at a more fundamental of Science at Harvard University. She serves accounted for only by matter that we see); galactic structure for too long, in essence level, what exactly dark matter is. Is it made on Scientific American ’s board of advisers. George Musser is a contributing editor for Scientific American. He is its imprint on the cosmic microwave back- wiping it out and keeping the universe up of a new type of fundamental particle, or Among her many books is Dark Matter and the author of Spooky Action at a Distance (2015) and The Complete Idiot’s ground radiation left over from the time smooth and homogeneous.
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