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What if the world of obscure topic was a mirror of our own , just with a break set of rules ? That might excuse why dark affair is likely so abundant yet invisible , a new theory suggests .

Dark matteris the orphic , unidentified meaning that seems to make up the mass of all the mass in the population ; for every 2 pounds ( 1 kilo ) of regular matter , there ’s just about 10 pound ( 5 kg ) of disconsolate matter . It does n’t interact with wanton or normal affair . The only means scientist can find it is through its elusive gravitative influence on normal topic , such as the motions of principal within galaxies and thegrowth of crack - large structuresin cosmic time .

A galaxy cluster colorized to show invisible dark matter (blue) alongside regular, visible matter (red, green, and orange).

It might be easy to think that because matter and sorry affair operate with different rules , one would be totally dominant over the other . But despite take wildly different properties , the amounts of normal thing and dark subject are still in the same park . That seems like a strange coincidence .   To explain this , scientists pop the question there could be some sort of hide linkup between them . They published their researchJan . 22 on the preprint journal arXiv .

The researchers posited that for every physical fundamental interaction in normal matter , there ’s a mirror of it in the populace of dark matter . This would be a novel kind of balance in nature , connecting the normal and dark subject worlds , the investigator pronounce .

This symmetry would help explicate why dark matter and regular matter have roughly the same abundance .

A grainy image of a galaxy

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In the composition , the investigator point out another foreign coincidence . In the purgative of normal topic , a neutron and proton have almost exactly the same great deal , which enables them to oblige together and form stable atoms . If a proton was just a footling act heavier , it would be totally unstable and crumble in only a few minutes , making the formation of atoms impossible . In this imaginary scenario , the universe would be leave with a sea of free - floating neutrons .

Perhaps , the researchers suggest , this imaginary number , broken cosmos may be a reality in the saturnine topic mirror version of our population . A special compounding of physics led to a proton having roughly the same spate as a neutron ; perhaps in the dark thing mirror , that combination of physics played out differently , causing the " dark proton " to evaporate and depart behind a ocean of " blue neutron " — what we identify as sorry topic .

an illustration of the Milky Way in the center of a blue cloud of gas

While this proposed mirror model allows for the possibility of plenteous interaction among glum matter particles — dark mote , dark alchemy and adark periodic table of dark elements — there ca n’t be too much interaction , the researchers noted . If the drab matter interacts with itself a lot , it would incline to clump up far more than scientist think it does . So most of the dark matter has to be comparatively simple — a sea of free - floating , achromatic corpuscle .

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These additional interactions , which would be a dark mirror of our chemical world , may enable future scientist to test this theory . In the early creation , normal matter underwent nucleosynthesis , when the first element constitute in a nuclear plasm . If this new idea is right , then there was a mirror nucleosynthesis also happen in dour matter . In those chaotic early daytime , channels may have opened up between the two worlds , enable them to affect each other .

By cautiously valuate the rate of element formation — something that the next generation of cosmologic observatory hope to do — scientists may be able-bodied to find evidence for one of these channels and get a glimpse into the mirror dark universe .

An abstract illustration of lines and geometric shapes over a starry background

Atomic structure, large collider, CERN concept.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument maps the night sky from the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope in Arizona.

An illustration of lightning striking in spake

an illustration of outer space with stars whizzing by

An artist�s interpretation of a white dwarf exploding while matter from another white dwarf falls onto it

On the left is part of a new half-sky image in which three wavelengths of light have been combined to highlight the Milky Way (purple) and cosmic microwave background (gray). On the right, a closeup of the Orion Nebula.

A false-color image taken with MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) as part of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PAndAS) shows a zoomed-in view of the newly discovered Andromeda XXXV satellite galaxy. A white ellipse, that measures about 1,000 light-years across its longest axis, shows the extent of the galaxy. Within the ellipse�s boundary is a cluster of mostly dim stars, ranging in hues from bright blues to warm yellows.

an illustration of a base on the moon

An aerial photo of mountains rising out of Antarctica snowy and icy landscape, as seen from NASA�s Operation IceBridge research aircraft.

A tree is silhouetted against the full completed Annular Solar Eclipse on October 14, 2023 in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah.

Screen-capture of a home security camera facing a front porch during an earthquake.

Circular alignment of stones in the center of an image full of stones

Three-dimensional rendering of an HIV virus