'It is amazing that people have not thought of this before.'Įinstein's theory of general relativity is based on classical physics it perfectly predicts how gravity works most of the time, but it breaks down in extreme circumstances where quantum mechanical effects become significant, such as at the center of a black hole. 'Our idea was a very simple one,' Calmet told Live Science in an email. Importantly, they used concepts from theories of quantum gravity, which resulted in a much narrower range than the previous estimates, which used only Einstein's theory of general relativity.
What scientists do know is that dark matter seems to interact with light and normal matter only through gravity, and not via any of the other fundamental forces and so the researchers used gravitational theories to arrive at their estimated range for the masses of dark matter particles. The new mass bounds could help eliminate some of these candidates, depending on the details of the specific dark matter model, Calmet said.
Possible candidates for dark matter particles include ghostly, tiny particles known as neutrinos, theoretical dark, cold particles known as axions, and proposed weakly-interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe
