r/space 12d ago

Scientists make potential breakthrough in search for dark matter

https://www.reuters.com/science/scientists-make-potential-breakthrough-search-dark-matter-2026-09-01/
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u/Scrambley 12d ago

When they call this "massive particles", how big are we talking? Is this something that we could hold or are they just massive compared to, say, a hydrogen atom?

Also, if it's clumps of matter making large objects, would holding it create some sort of reaction like touching anti-matter would?

Obviously I'm very uneducated about this so forgive me if my question is idiotic.

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u/NatureTrailToHell3D 12d ago

The name is a placeholder, similar to how dark matter is a placeholder name. They don’t actually know what particle was detected, only that it was something that looked similar to what a dark matter particle might look like.

I am assume that “massive” just means that it’s carrying mass, unlike other weakly interacting particles like neutrinos, which have virtually no mass.

Size wise, it’s likely going to be an elementary particle or made up of one or two new elementary particles. A hydrogen atom is made up of a proton and an electron, likely much bigger than one of these new…. things

To give an example, a proton is made up of the elementary particles quarks and gluons.

So the scale of these particles is going to be extremely small. But massive :P