Inelastic Dark Matter Ruled Out?
The new XENON100 results do not support models of inelastic dark matter used to reconcile the DAMA modulation signal with null detections from other experiments. But what’s DAMA and “inelastic dark matter”?
Assessing the Standard Cosmological Model
The standard model of cosmology is simple, elegant, and very successful. How do we tell that whether our model is doing well? And what phenomena does it still have trouble explaining?
Dark Matter and Planet Habitability
This eye-catching theory paper asks an elegant but simple question: when dark matter is gravitationaly captured by a planet, can the energy released when it annihalates provide enough heat to make the planet habitable?
A Peek into Pandora
Where can you find ‘ghost’, ‘dark’, ‘stripped’, and ‘bullet’ clusters? The Pandora Cluster, which has become an excellent laboratory for studying the nature of other shady characters in our universe like dark matter.
Dark matter with microlensing
Some strong gravitational lenses exhibit what are known as “anomalous flux ratios”: the multiple images don’t have the same flux. One possible explanation for this is microlensing, which results from the gravitational influence of stars and perhaps dark matter.
Using Clumpy Streams to Detect Missing Satellites
Many simulations of our universe result in a similar discrepancy with current observations. The simulations predict an abundance of subhalos around galaxies the size of our Milky Way which are an order of magnitude higher than observations suggest. This paper tackles the issue of detecting these presumably faint subhalos by analyzing the effects they might have on streams from globular clusters and other satellite galaxies we know to exist.