The nature of dark matter is one of the main mysteries of modern astrophysics. Many observations and calculations point to the existence of “invisible” matter that interacts only gravitationally with “ordinary” baryonic matter. These include something invisible “spinning” the outer regions of galactic disks faster than predicted speeds, the movement of galaxy clusters, calculations of residual radiation, fluctuations in the density of baryonic matter, and others.

Because dark matter does not interact with radiation, astrophysicists cannot study it using conventional methods. Therefore, they are looking for alternative ways. The European Pulsar Timing Array, an international group of scientists, uses millisecond pulsars to search for dark matter. They have been collecting data for almost a quarter of a century.

By observing the timing of signals from these cosmic “beacons”, the group is trying to estimate the density of ultralight dark matter particles. If it exists, it should disrupt the time between pulsar explosions. In the new study, scientists analyzed secondary observation data from six European radio telescopes. The results of the research were published at: Physical Examination Letters.

“Idea [дослідження] It came about when I asked my curator if I could continue my research in the field of gravitational waves from the perspective of fundamental particle physics. “The main aim of this project was to impose restrictions on the existence of so-called ultralight dark matter in our galaxy,” explains Clement Smarra, one of the authors of the new scientific study.

Thanks to longer and more accurate observation data, scientists were able to identify hypothetical ultralight particles with a mass of 10.^-24.0 up to 10^-23.3 Electron volts cannot make up all the dark matter in the outskirts of the Milky Way.

The cold dark matter model successfully explains many aspects of the large-scale structure of the universe, but it does not work well at distances shorter than a kiloparsec. For example, according to observations, the density of dark matter inside galaxies is constant, but according to the model, it changes from the center to the edges. Another known problem is that the number of satellite galaxies in the Milky Way is “wrong”.

The authors of the study hope that further observations of the behavior of pulsar signals will allow us to learn more about the nature of dark matter. But this source of radiation has already convincingly shown that the mystery of dark matter cannot be solved solely at the expense of its hypothetical ultralight particles.