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RE: Using the Sun as a probe for dark matter
Interesting mystery well explained.
What is thought to happen to ordinary matter when dark matter reacts with it?
Interesting mystery well explained.
What is thought to happen to ordinary matter when dark matter reacts with it?
Dark matter can collide with atomic nucleus and be scattered away. This consists actually of the principle of direct dark matter detection where one measures the recoil of the atomic nucleus to get back to the initial dark matter particle
So it's just a very small transfer of momentum to the nucleus of an atom, not much else, if even that. What kinds of atoms are used?
Since electrons are hundreds and thousands of times lighter than a nucleus, couldn't it knock away an outer electron, making the atom an ion?
Dark matter wind, but not aether wind, hmmmmmmm.....
More or less small. This is model dependent and it depends on the used nuclei. The nuclear recoil is in the range of 1 to 100 keV, give or take. There are many examples of detectors, using for instance noble gases (Xenon in particular), Germanium. etc.
The expected recoils are also large for electrons. See the more detailed answer below :p
it is more the solar system moving inside the dark matter clouds in our galaxy (that can be seen as a wind from the Earth standpoint.
It sounds like dark matter has is more than enough momentum to knock loose an electron and continue on only slightly deviated from it's course, unless it ignores electrons. But then I'm definitely no expert on dark matter.
Is there any estimate of the velocity of the dark matter wind or is it just the motion of earth through the Milkyway?
How big are the dark matter clouds?
Is the dark energy stored in the energy of dark matter?
So many questions :)
I have checked the the literature as I didn't know much on this too. Dark matter - electron scattering is also possible. Dark matter candidates heavier than the proton mass, using nuclear recoil makes a detection much more easier. For lighter dark matter, dark matter - electron scattering become an option. There are actually results, and constraints.
There are very big. There are about 5-6 times more dark matter in the universe than visible matter.
Dark energy and dark matter consist of two different ingredients of the universe energy budget.
Thanks for the well thought out educated answers.
v ~ c/1000
Answers and information always lead to more questions.
Dark Energy and Dark Matter are pretty weird stuff.