Dark Matter could be a Cosmic Relic from Extra Dimensions

Dark Matter, the enigmatic substance that accounts for the vast majority of the universe’s mass, may be made up of massive particles known as gravitons that first emerged shortly after the Big Bang. These particles are cosmic refugees from other realms.

These particles may have been generated in the correct proportions to describe the Dark Matter. Those can be “seen” through its gravitational effect on conventional matter,. In the early cosmos, ordinary particle collisions produce large gravitons, according to the study’s co-author. Because this process was supposed to be too infrequent, the massive gravitons were assumed to be Dark Matter.

Cacciapaglia discovered, with the help of Korea University physicists Haiying Cai and Seung J. Lee, that enough gravitons would have been produced in the early cosmos to account for all of the Dark Matter detected today. In February, the study was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The gravitons would have a mass of less than 1 megaelectronvolt or approximately twice that of an electron. This mass level is lower than the scale at which the Higgs boson generates mass for the conventional matter. It is necessary for the model to account for all of the Dark Matter in the universe. These gravitons were discovered by the researchers while searching for evidence of extra dimensions, which some physicists believe exist in addition to the three dimensions of space and the fourth, time.