Dark Matter Candidates
Dark Matter Candidates
Dark matter candidates: [A line graph is shown and labeled at left quarter in eV and further to the right in g together with some prefixes.] [The labels read:] µeV, meV, eV, keV, MeV, GeV, TeV, 10 -18 kg, ng, µg, mg, g, kg, TON, 10 6 kg, 10 12 kg, 10 18 kg, 10 24 kg, 10 30 kg
[All items are shown in bars ranging between two approximately values:] < 1 µeV - 10 meV: Axion
1 eV - 10 keV: Sterile neutrino
0.5 MeV (exactly): Electrons painted with space camouflage
10 GeV - 10 TeV: Neutralino
100 TeV - 10 -17 kg: Q-ball
1 ng - 100 ng: Pollen
0.1 mg - 1 mg: No-See-Ums
10 -1 g (exactly): Bees
10 g - 100 g: 8-balls
100 kg - TON: Space cows
TON - 10 9 kg: Obelisks, monoliths, pyramids
10 9 kg - 10 33 kg: Black holes ruled out by: 10 9 kg - 10 13 kg: Gamma rays 10 13 kg - 10 17 kg: GRB lensing 10 15 kg - 10 22 kg: Neutron star data 10 21 kg - 10 30 kg: Micro lensing 10 24 kg - 10 30 kg: Solar system stability 10 30 kg - 10 33 kg: Buzzkill astronomers
10 33 kg - >10 36 kg: Maybe those orbit lines on space diagrams are real and very heavy

Dark matter is a hypothetical, invisible form of matter used by the vast majority of astronomers to explain the far too high apparent mass of objects at large scales in our universe. In galaxies, stars are orbiting faster than the gravitational force of the sum of the masses of visible matter in the galaxy could cause, and entire galaxies are observed moving much faster around each other than their visible masses could explain. In galactic collisions, the mass can appear to separate from the visible matter, as if the mass doesn't collide but the visible matter does. A small handful of galaxies have been observed to not have this property, suggesting that it is a thing that a galaxy can have more or less of and is separable from. At scales of our solar system, those effects are too small and can't be measured. The most plausible explanation for all of these phenomena is that there is some "dark matter" that has gravity, but is otherwise undetectable. In cosmology, dark matter is estimated to account for 85% of the total matter in the universe.
This comic gives a set of possibilities for what dark matter could possibly be, charted by mass from smallest (given in electronvolts ) to largest (given in kilograms). Masses in the range 10 −15 to 10 −3 kg are given in grams together with appropriate prefixes, while the ton takes the place of 10 3 kg.
Only massive objects ranging from subatomic particles up to super massive ones are covered in this comic. There are also alternative hypotheses trying to modify general relativity with no need of additional matter. The problem is that these theories can't explain all different observations at once. Nonetheless dark matter is a mystery because no serious candidate has been found yet.
The joke in this comic is that the range of the mass of the possible particles and objects stretch over 81 powers of ten, with explanations suggested by astronomers covering only some portions of that range. Randall fills the gaps with highly absurd suggestions.
An axion is a hypothetical elementary particle postulated in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics , a theory of the strong force between quarks and gluons which form hadrons like protons or neutrons . If axions exist within a specific range of mass they might be a component of dark matter. The advantage of this particle is that it's based on a theory which could be proved or also disproved by measurements in the future. Other theories, not mentioned in this comic, like the weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are much more vague.
Sterile neutrinos are hypothetical particles interacting only via gravity. It's an actual candidate for dark matter. The well known neutrinos are also charged under the weak interaction and can be detected by experiments.
Electrons are fundamental particles which compose the outer layers of atoms. A large number of electrons in the galaxy would be relatively easy to detect, as they not only interact with light (which dark matter does not appear to), but also have a strong electric charge. Presumably, space camouflage is a positively-charged coating which prevents electrons from interacting with light. (Needless to say, this is not an actual candidate for dark matter.) The mass of an electron is about 0.5 MeV which fits well into the graph.
A neutralino is a hypothetical particle from supersymmetry and is also a current candidate for dark matter. But there is not evidence whether or not supersymmetry is correct and none of the predicted particles have been found yet.
In theoretical physics, a Q-ball is a stable group of particles. It's an actual candidate for dark matter.
(In billiards, a cue ball is the white (or yellow) ball hit with the cue in normal play. In addition, Cueball is the name explainxkcd uses for the most common xkcd character.)
Pollen is a joke candidate, though people with seasonal allergies may suspect that the universe is genuinely made up entirely of pollen in the springtime.
No-See-Ums are a family (Ceratopogonidae) of small flies, 1–4 mm long, that can pass through most window screens. Another joke candidate, because dark matter is invisible and the name "no-see-ums" implies that the flies are invisible.
Insects of the clade Anthophila are major pollinators of flowering plants. In recent years bees have been disappearing at an alarming rate; Doctor Who explained that they are in fact aliens leaving Earth prior to a Dalek invasion.
In pool, the 8-ball is a black ball numbered 8. It's a pun with Q-ball/cue ball. Unless undetected aliens have discovered billiards and become addicted to it, 8-balls are found only on Earth and are, hence, unlikely dark matter candidates. The 8-ball is also a popular unit of sale for black market pharmaceuticals like cocaine, where it stands for ⅛ ounce (3.5 g). This doesn't make sense as a dark matter candidate either – unless dark matter is hard to detect because it's illegal & trying to avoid the cops.
Cows are bovines extensively farmed on Earth for milk and meat. [ citation needed ] Although there is folklore concerning cows achieving circum-lunar orbits , not to mention their appearance on a beloved space western TV show , as Muppet cow Natalie in the Sesame Street News Flash (and others less-remembered ), they have yet to be found elsewhere in the Universe.  In the television show "Too Close for Comfort", one of the characters is the cartoonist of a comic strip called "Cosmic Cow". Spherical cows (and especially those in a vacuum, as they would essentially be if in space) have also been used (humorously) by physicists needing to simplify some source of mass in a given problem.
While those human constructions are huge on a human scale, they're negligible at universe-scale. It would take a large number of such constructions, distributed through space, to replicate the effects of dark matter; while a scenario could be envisioned where enough such constructs existed, with properties and distribution allowing them to match observations, this is obviously not a likely explanation.
They often show up in fiction and pseudo-scientific literature as alien artifacts generating immense unknown power out of nowhere, with the most famous and influential example being the three monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey (with the largest having a mass of about 500,000 tonnes).
Black holes are known to occur in sizes of a few solar masses (about 10 30 -10 31 kg) as remnants of the core of former big stars, as well as in quite large sizes at the centers of galaxies (millions or even billions of solar masses). But recent gravitational wave detections indicate that black holes at 50 or 100 solar masses also exist, though their origin is still not understood. Randall doesn't mention this but some astronomers hope that these could fill at least a part of the gap. While black holes are widely reported to be ruled out as a candidate for dark matter for various reasons Randall has listed, such constraints are based on "monochromatic" mass distributions -- meaning that all such black holes are assumed to have the same mass -- which is considered physically implausible for populations of merging bodies which are known to have vastly different masses. See: Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter (2017) and Primordial black hole constraints for extended mass functions (2017) (That this is a common practice in cosmology may be part of the reference to "buzzkill" astronomers.) He rules out all black holes in the range of approximately 10 10 kg to 10 33 kg even when below some gaps at the bars appear.
Except the last item, all range below the mass of the sun (2x10 30 kg) while the smallest known black hole is about four solar masses.
Not covered by this comic are massive astrophysical compact halo objects (MACHOs) composed of hard to detect dim objects like black holes, neutron stars, brown dwarfs, and other objects composed of normal baryonic matter. Nevertheless observations have shown that the total amount of baryonic matter in our universe on large scales is much smaller than it would be needed to explain all the measured gravitational effects.
Diagrams of our solar system (or any planetary system) often show lines representing the elliptical paths the planet takes around its sun. These lines don't show real objects, though. Astronomers just draw them on pictures of the solar system to show where the planets move. If you draw a line on a map to give someone directions, that line isn't an object in real life; it's just on the map. If these lines were real, they would be huge (Earth's would be 940 million km long (2π AU) and Neptune's would be 28 billion kilometers long). Powers of Ten (1977) gives a good sense of just how large these orbit lines need to be in order to be visible in space diagrams. If these orbit lines were also very dense, they would have a huge mass and could possibly account for the missing 85% of the mass in the universe. But they would also constantly be impaling the planets, including the Earth, which would probably be a problem. [ citation needed ] Their mass would also affect planetary motions in ways which we would detect.  A related worry about space travel was expressed in previous centuries; it was thought that the planets were embedded within crystal shells (spheres or Platonic solids), and a rocket into space could smash the shells and send planets plummeting to Earth. Another joke candidate.
The title text refers to the fact that space is just vast emptiness where a little bit of dirt could be overlooked. Actually the mean density of detectable matter in the universe, according to NASA, is equivalent to roughly 1 proton per 4 cubic meters . And because this matter is mostly located in galaxies -- and inside there in stars and clouds -- the space between is even more empty. For comparison, one gram of hydrogen consists of 6.022 × 10 23 atoms . Like at home wiping with a cleaning cloth in which we can see the dirt that wasn't clearly visible on the surface we have wiped, Randall believes that some few atoms more per cubic meter could stay undetected in the same way. This isn't true because in the space between galaxies astronomers can detect matter as it spreads over thousands or millions cubic light years. Atoms can't hide; there is always radiation.
Dark matter candidates: [A line graph is shown and labeled at left quarter in eV and further to the right in g together with some prefixes.] [The labels read:] µeV, meV, eV, keV, MeV, GeV, TeV, 10 -18 kg, ng, µg, mg, g, kg, TON, 10 6 kg, 10 12 kg, 10 18 kg, 10 24 kg, 10 30 kg
[All items are shown in bars ranging between two approximately values:] < 1 µeV - 10 meV: Axion
1 eV - 10 keV: Sterile neutrino
0.5 MeV (exactly): Electrons painted with space camouflage
10 GeV - 10 TeV: Neutralino
100 TeV - 10 -17 kg: Q-ball
1 ng - 100 ng: Pollen
0.1 mg - 1 mg: No-See-Ums
10 -1 g (exactly): Bees
10 g - 100 g: 8-balls
100 kg - TON: Space cows
TON - 10 9 kg: Obelisks, monoliths, pyramids
10 9 kg - 10 33 kg: Black holes ruled out by: 10 9 kg - 10 13 kg: Gamma rays 10 13 kg - 10 17 kg: GRB lensing 10 15 kg - 10 22 kg: Neutron star data 10 21 kg - 10 30 kg: Micro lensing 10 24 kg - 10 30 kg: Solar system stability 10 30 kg - 10 33 kg: Buzzkill astronomers
10 33 kg - >10 36 kg: Maybe those orbit lines on space diagrams are real and very heavy
