Invisible supernovas called 'bosenovas' may be exploding all around us, new research suggests
By Paul Sutter published about 12 hours ago
What happens when an invisible star dies? It erupts in an invisible explosion, of course. New research describes how these unseen 'bosenovas' may behave.
A blood-red supernova remnant spotted by Hubble. Hypothetical bosenovas would behave similarly -- while being completely invisible (Image credit: NASA Goddard)
All around the universe, invisible stars may be dying in high-energy explosions, and new research suggests how scientists could actually detect these unseen catastrophes.
In a paper published June 28 in the preprint database arXiv, a team of astrophysicists explored what would happen when boson stars — theoretical large objects made of invisible dark matter — reached the ends of their lives. The result, they wrote, is a massive explosion similar to a supernova, only invisible: a "bosenova."
The invisible universe
Dark matter is a mysterious substance that makes up more than 85% of the mass of almost every galaxy in the universe. While astronomers have found multiple lines of evidence pointing to its existence, all of those lines depend on dark matter's gravitational influence on normal matter. We have yet to detect the presence of dark matter in any other way, so the identity of the particle that's responsible for dark matter remains in question.
For years, the leading theory was that the dark matter particle was heavy — as heavy, if not heavier than, particles like protons and neutrons. But searches for the interactions between heavy dark matter and normal matter have come up empty. So now, theorists are turning to models in which dark matter is extremely light.
For perspective, the lightest known particle is the neutrino, which is about 500,000 times lighter than an electron. In the most extreme models, the lightweight dark matter can be billions of times lighter than a neutrino.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/dark-matter/invisible-supernovas-called-bosenovas-may-be-exploding-all-around-us-new-research-suggests
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