According to recent findings, the first instance of a "boson star"
comprised of dark matter may be orbited by a sun-like star in a faraway star
system.
For a very long time, astronomers believed that a strange star system
discovered by the Gaia spacecraft of the European Space Agency was just a
star orbiting a black hole. Two astronomers are now contesting that
assertion, saying that the data points to something far stranger—possibly a
previously unknown class of star formed of dark matter. Their study was
released on April 18 on the preprint service
arXiv, but it
has not yet undergone peer review.
A star that resembles the sun plus, well, something else make up the system
itself. The star has nearly the same chemical richness as our star and
weighs 0.93 solar masses less than the sun. Its enigmatic partner is around
11 solar masses heavier and substantially more gigantic. The objects
complete one circle of each other every 188 days at a distance of 1.4
astronomical units, or roughly the distance at which Mars orbits the
sun.
What may be that shadowy companion? There is a chance that it is a black
hole. Even though that would perfectly match the orbital measurements, there
are problems with that theory. A sun-like star would need to grow beside one
of those monstrous stars in order for this condition to occur since black
holes are created when extremely large stars die. That scenario demands a
remarkable level of fine-tuning to create the match and retain these
particles in orbit around one other for millions of years, while it is not
completely impossible.
So maybe that mysterious orbital partner is something far more unusual, as
the authors of a recent study suggest. They speculate that it may be a
collection of dark matter particles.
The bulk of the mass in every galaxy is made up of dark matter, an unseen
kind of substance. Our knowledge of its identification is currently
insufficient. Although most theoretical models assume that dark matter is
evenly dispersed throughout each galaxy, certain theories enable it to
cluster together.
According to one of these hypotheses, dark matter is a brand-new kind of
boson. The particles known as bosons are those that carry the natural
forces; a photon is an example of a boson that carries the electromagnetic
force. The Standard Model of particle physics only has a small number of
bosons, but in theory, the cosmos may have many more varieties.
Although these bosons wouldn't have any forces, the cosmos would
nonetheless be saturated with them. Most significantly, they would be able
to group together into huge clumps. These aggregates may range in size from
being considerably smaller to becoming the size of whole star systems. Boson
stars are a novel moniker for hypothetical objects that might be as tiny as
stars and represent the tiniest known groupings of bosonic dark
matter.
Boson stars would not be seen at all. Dark matter cannot interact with
other particles or light, hence the only way to identify it is via its
gravitational effect on its surroundings, much to how an ordinary star would
circle a boson star.
The scientists noted that a straightforward boson dark matter model could
generate enough boson stars to explain this finding in the Gaia data and
that substituting a boson star for a putative black hole may account for all
of the observational data.
Although it is improbable that this is a boson star, the scientists
nonetheless recommended more observations. Most significantly, this special
system provides us with a unique chance to investigate the behavior of
strong gravity and test the viability of Einstein's general relativity
theory. Second, this system is ideal for experimentation if the object is a
boson star. We may experiment with our models of boson stars to determine
how well they can account for the system's orbital dynamics and then utilize
that knowledge to get a look into the deep recesses of the cosmos.
