Dense Dark Matter Clumps Might Unify Three Cosmic Puzzles
A UC Riverside study proposes that dense clumps of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) can undergo gravothermal collapse to form compact cores that explain three different observations—an ultra-dense object in the gravitational lens JVAS B1938+666, perturbations in the GD-1 stellar stream, and the unusually young, metal-rich Fornax 6 globular cluster in the Fornax dwarf galaxy—linking distant lensing, our Galaxy, and a satellite galaxy under one mechanism, unlike collisionless CDM. The work, published in Physical Review Letters, is supported by the John Templeton Foundation and the DoE.
