Heavy Photons?

     Dark matter, the majority of the universes matter (roughly 85%), is in fact not made of light. Many physicists sought to believe that photons (fixed quantity of light energy) could assist in discovering the many mysterious of this matter. At the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, Vitor Cardoso and his colleagues shed some light to the idea. According to some theories of “heavy photons” this form of dark matter would have a small amount of mass and may carry an unknown fundamental force that allows it to interact only with ordinary photons. In other words, this hypothetical version of dark matter would be ‘invisible’. Cardoso states, in accordance to this theory, “in that case, heavy photons passing close to black holes would have noticeable effects” (Cardoso). Hypothetically speaking, if conditions are exactly precise, a photon with the most minute “in between” quantity of mass enters into an orbit of the immense gyrating black hole: it can essentially gain momentum. Basically, with a fixed amount of mass and right path of trajectory, a photon can continue orbiting through a black hole. Cardoso and his assembly of colleagues assessed the period of time that a photon of a given mass would take in order to sap a black hole’s spin. With this said, the theoretical ‘heavy photon’ must be lighter than 10^-20 electronvolts, the team concluded that this would be highly improbable.

* Information obtained at www.newscientist.com 

* Pictures obtained at www.milesmathis.com & www.nasa.gov

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