Was an Earlier Universe Destroyed by Dark Matter? A Galaxy Classic (VIDEO)

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

[someone...]

Isn't it when dark matter or anti-matter particles collide with matter particles that it explodes? Not when it collides with itself?

[Dredd]

This began far more recently than the article indicates. A faithful faction within cosmology overthrew the scientists and instilled the great faith into the mix; a faith greater than the "other faithful" could hope to muster.

[Narendra Nath]

The language of the item about dark matter induced destruction seems strange, as dark and visible matter in the universe have lived together for over 13 to 14 billion years. The violence existed mostly in the first billion years of growing turmoil , following the Big bang tremendously tumulous birth!