"[The dark matter annihilation] puffs up the cloud and keeps it at about the size of our solar system," said Gondolo. Under such conditions a regular star would have a hard time getting started, he explains, but the vast, cool dark star could just continue puffing until it can not longer annihilate dark matter or until it runs out of ordinary matter to suck into it. Or, Gondolo posits, it could feed on massive amounts of matter, if available, then collapse to form a supermassive black hole. "This could explain why we see quasars at very high red shift," said Gondolo, referring to the quasar black holes detected at very great distances and therefore very far back in time. The bottom line is that the potential dark stars and what they might look like to astronomers hunting for them depends entirely on the nature of dark matter -- which is unknown. "Different dark matter candidates could have different effects on early star formation," explained astrophysicist Alexander Kusenko of the University of California at Los Angeles. By modeling the early effects and then looking for signs of those effects in the distant universe, it might be possible to discover what dark matter really is. "This is clearly a good place to look for clues," Kusenko told Discovery News. Related Links: Larry O'Hanlon's blog: Earth Impacts Howstuffworks.com: Dark Matter |
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