Detecting Dark Matter using Exo planets by measuring their temperatures
Dark matter is theorized to exist to explain how the universe works, but there is little to no proof of its existence, and scientists are always in search of unique ways to detect it. And recently they have been using exoplanets as dark matter detectors.
How, you may ask, well in this paper, by two astrophysicists Rebecca K. Leane, a theoretical astroparticle physicist, working in SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Juri Smirnov, working in the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
They suggest that Dark Matter could be detected by measuring the effect it has on the temperature of exoplanets, which could provide some insights into dark matter studies. They say that if there is sufficient gravitational force, deposited Dark matter kinetic energy can noticeably increase the temperature of the system, and Dark matter annihilation can also induce heating.
Further, they say, Dark Matter particles in the galactic halo can scatter with exoplanets, lose energy, and become gravitationally captured by the exoplanets, and as the dark mater accumulates and annihilates, it releases its mass-energy to heat exoplanets, and if the annihilation rate is in equilibrium with scattering rate, the annihilation heat measured by upcoming infrared telescopes allows for a new probe of the Dark matter scattering rate, like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
Exoplanets may be useful in detecting light dark matter, which is the dark matter with a lower mass.
And as the density of Dark matter is more in the center of the Milky Way, the temperature of exoplanets that are closer to the galactic center should be higher, this could itself prove Dark matter's existence. They propose to search for exoplanets which are super Jupiters, and Brown Dwarfs for evidence of heating caused by dark matter.
And as of now we only know that there are 4,300 confirmed exoplanets, and it is estimated that there is at least one planet per star in our Galaxy and about one cold planet per star, so there should be about 300 Billion exoplanets that can be discovered which opens a great opportunity for understanding potential signals. And as there also are cold exoplanets that are in larger and farther orbits from their parent star, or some even go rogue, floating free through the cosmos, so the low temperature allows for a clearer signal for detecting Dark matter heating, and furthermore using exoplanets have lower core temperature as they don't go under nuclear fusion like stars, so lower core temperature prevent Dark Matter evaporation compared to evaporation in the stars, which provides new sensitivity to MeV Dark Matter.
There will be two searches for identifying Dark Matter heating in exoplanets, the first will be searching for distant exoplanets, which will include searching for rogue exoplanets and brown dwarfs, as their observation isn't obstructed. And other will be for searching for local exoplanets, by testing the hypothesis that Dark Matter contributes to the internal heating of the Gas Giants.
There are also many advantages to using exoplanets as detectors as there is no need for new instruments and technologies to be developed for testing this hypothesis.
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