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Old 02-04-2011, 10:55 AM
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CraigS
Unpredictable

CraigS is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Australia
Posts: 3,023
So this is a fairly new way to think of DM:

Quote:
These WIMPs interact with regular matter by a weak nuclear force and gravity, but they are also antiparticles. When two WIMPs come together, they work to annihilate each other and cause a burst of energy.
The paper they've written says:

Quote:
In many models, dark matter particles can elastically scatter with nuclei in planets, causing those particles to become gravitationally bound.

While the energy expected to be released through the subsequent annihilations of dark matter particles in the interior of the Earth is negligibly small (a few megawatts in the most optimistic models), larger planets that reside in regions with higher densities of slow moving dark matter could plausibly capture and annihilate dark matter at a rate high enough to maintain liquid water on their surfaces, even in the absence of additional energy from starlight or other sources.

On these rare planets, it may be dark matter rather than light from a host star that makes it possible for life to emerge, evolve, and survive.
Creative thinking going on here, methinks …

Cheers
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