Was Universe 1.0 Destroyed by Dark Matter?

Did dark matter destroy the universe?  You might be looking around at the way things "exist" and thinking "No", but we're talking about ancient history.  Three hundred million years after the start of the universe, things had finally cooled down enough to form hydrogen atoms out of all the protons and electrons that were zipping around - only to have them all ripped up again around the one billion year mark.  Why?

Most believe that the first quasars, active galaxies whose central black holes are the cosmic-ray equivalent of a firehose, provided the breakup energy, but some Fermilab scientists have another idea.  Dan Hooper and Alexander Belikov posit that invisible, self-destructing dark matter may have blown up every atom in the universe.  At least it's plausible in that if we wanted to ionize an entire universe, we'd want something that sounded that awesome.

Dark matter is a candidate for providing ionizing radiation because, if it exists at all, it's its own antiparticle: if two dark matter particles hit each other they can blow up.  Insane as it sounds, the theory predicts that despite making up most of everything the particles themselves are so tiny, and so terribly fussy about colliding, that they can form huge structures without destroying themselves.  Positron emissions which may be an indication of exactly this kind of self-destruction have been observed by the European PAMELA satellite currently orbiting the Earth.

As theories go, this one is more awesome than accepted.  The quasar hypothesis has wide support, and crediting something we've never even seen with reshaping the universe may be going a little far.  Then again, that's what modern cosmology is doing with dark matter anyway, so maybe this idea will fit right in.

Posted by Luke McKinney

Dark matter rips up the early universe

Comments

[Jimmy Soto]

Wow, I think you might just be onto something there!

R
www.anonymize.tk

[Rayzakk]

It was all the work of Anti Monitor. He'll destroy everything. See I can make up fake science too.

[God]

Rayzakk, you're an idiot.

[Rayzakk]

Ok then if there is any real science here explain to me what useful application it has other than to try to promote an aethiestic agenda?

[unimpressed]

I'm tired of junk science articles that don't know the difference between dark matter and anti matter, could you people at least Wikipedia it or something first?

[Coyote]

WHY ARE MY COMMENTS DELETED?

ARE MY WORDS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU? DO I CRITICIZE YOUR SITE EXCESSIVELY? DO I INTRODUCE NON-SCIENTIFIC GENRES?

NO PROBLEM, I WILL REMOVE YOUR SCIENCE-WANNA-BE SITE FROM MY GOOGLE HOMEPAGE.

GOODBYE

[Narendra Nath]

Noted the comments of Coyote. i have also made similar comments that were deleted from a recent item on Prof. Hawkings. If you truly believe in the decent freedom of speech, such things should not be repeated in future. Otherwise i will also like to cut you off from my Internet site!
Regarding the news item on dark matter, destroying the visible universe of ours! It is all a made up fear. Both dark matter and visible matter came out of the same primordial matter with which the universe got created in the first instance, say Big Bang. We know that presently, dark matter only is making us in the visible universe to gain an accelerated expansion because of its ' repulsive' gravity through what is called dark energy. The latter is 73 % and the dark amtter is 23 % of the total energy content of the Universe.The visible 'our' universe is just 4 %, as scientifically measured currently. Both dark and visible matter is co-existing throughout the universe and there is no question that the the former will eat away the latter.In fact there is hardly any interaction between the two because of the non-baryonic nature of dark matter relative to our baryonic nature, viz atoms, nuclei and molecules. The dark matter may well be some kind of 'frozen' quark matter. Free quarks can not interact with the baryonic matter, irrespective of matter antimatter form of existence. Anyway, in our universe, matter dominates well over the antimatter. The latter gets annihilated immediately as soon as it appears in our matter world!

[david]

god, how is this promoting an atheistic agenda? are you really that defensive about your religion? lemme guess "evolution is only theory" right?

[EvilCosmicMonkeyfrom Knoxville]

Coyote, Narendra Nath -

Join the club with me. I post comments that wind up vanishing down some cyber - journalistic black hole never to be seen again. If this keeps on happening, you will have one less commentator / reader / subscriber.

That said, this article is quite interesting. Some legends speak of the universe being created, descending into chaos / destroyed, then created anew. This may be science supporting such a concept.

[Rika Brecknell]

Dark Matter = Antimatter one a my theories anyway, no one knows what dark matter is and antimatter seems to have disappeared long ago, so I think dark matter is actually Antimatter!

[poo]

this vid is soooooooooooooooo good i truly believe that dark matter exists