Earth Could Be Surrounded By Long Hairs of Dark Matter

Astronomers think dark matter – a mysterious, invisible substance that neither emits nor absorbs light, and is about six times more common than “normal” matter – forms fine-grained but incredibly long streams throughout the universe.

When it comes to Earth, the streams of dark matter interact with the planet by passing straight through and producing dark matter “hairs” that seem to sprout from the Earth.

Mr Prézeau said: “A stream can be much larger than the solar system itself, and there are many different streams crisscrossing our galactic neighbourhood”.

However, when these streams of dark matter reach planets such as Earth, Prézeau suggests that the streams focus into a compact filament, or “hair”, of dark matter, many of which he believes are protruding from the Earth at this very moment. The researchers found that when dark matter goes through a planet, the stream particles focus into an ultra-dense filament, or hair, of dark matter. When they pass through the Earth and hit its core, they focus at the root over one billion times more than the average density.

These hairs have roots and tips, too: the root should be about 600,000 miles away from Earth’s surface, while stream particles grazing the same surface will form the tip, estimated to be twice as far from the planet as the root.

Prézeau is hopeful that they can gather data about the dark matter when they are able to find out where the root of the hairs is located.

Just to muddle matters more, scientists admit that neither dark matter nor dark energy has ever been directly detected, so it remains a theory, although many experiments are trying to unlock the mysteries of dark matter.

This artist’s illustration shows a close-up rendering of possible dark matter “hairs” surrounding Earth.

According to NASA, if the information were obtainable, scientists could use dark matter hairs to map out the layers of planetary bodies, including the depths of oceans.

The close distance of the origin of this dark matter hair will allow scientist to send a probe and closely study it, if it indeed exists, according to Earth Sky.

Dark matter is a hairy subject, and it’s about to get even hairier. Dark matter is believed to make up “fine-grained streams” of particles moving at the same velocity and orbit the galaxies.

The hairs have “kinks” as well, corresponding to transitions among the Earth layers or the core, mantle, and crust. With that said, further study is needed in order to better understand these hairs.