Is Dark Matter Real? Ask Neutron Stars!

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Gravitational waves from neutron star collisions could tell us whether dark energy or make it go away and replace it with dark gravitation – a modification of general relativity.


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Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

For about a century, general relativity rules physics. Einstein would be proud. It is quite successful in describing gravity in many situations from the very boring to the very extreme. It’s been tested more than naughty students and so far she has always passed. But even then it doesn’t have an easy life. Cosmologists complicate its life, saying that general relativity itself isn’t enough to explain the shocking speed at which the Universe increases its expansion.

If scientists want to explain why does the Universe expand but also why is its expansion quickening they were forced to add dark components into cosmological models. Lately, we mostly talked about two dark specters – dark matter and dark energy. When it comes to dark energy, scientists would be more than happy if they could say they proved it does exist. And dark energy – we aren’t even there…

Astrophysicist Enrico Barausse from the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) and his colleagues are among those who question the existence of dark energy. According to Barausse dark energy could just be an illusion. The observed quickening of the expansion could be a result of so far unknown modifications of general relativity or as Barausse calls it dark gravity

Barausse and his colleagues are convinced that this hypothesis could be checked by collisions of neutron stars. These extreme remains of supernovae explosions usually have a diameter of roughly 20 kilometers while having a mass of 1 – 2 Suns. They are also surrounded by exotic gravity and spacetime formed by this exotic gravity. And when two of these objects meet things get truly strange. The extreme gravity and spacetime during these collisions create many gravitational waves. And analyzing them could clarify what is the status of dark gravity.

Barausse’s team developed impressive mathematical and computational efforts and created the first simulation of the merger of neutron stars based on theories that go beyond general relativity. These simulations are very hard as it is a non-linear problem. The computational requirements were truly brutal as the simulations had to run on supercomputers for months on end and required the introduction of new mathematical methods.

The results of the simulations were let’s say surprising. They show that the dark gravity hypothesis explains our observations of gravitational waves coming from neutron star collisions by gravitational observatories LIGo and Virgo just as well as general relativity. So, we will have to wait for future generations of gravitational observatories to find true differences between dark gravity and general relativity in gravitational waves.

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4 comments
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Why did you start getting flagged by @spaminator?

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(Edited)

Hi. Please check the replies section in the user's blog. The Hivewtchers always leave comments on abusive posts.
The user knows very well. Received lots of warnings and comments. First for mass copypasta spam. Then turned to plagiarism.

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Considering that the user has had almost no existent engagement with the community since 11 months ago (as you can see in the blog's comment section), it is evident that the blog here is just to exploit the platform.

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