If dark matter is a particle, it should get inside red giant stars and change the way they behave

[Seldom Bucket]

Dark matter makes up the vast majority of matter in the universe, but we can’t see it. At least, not directly. Whatever the dark matter is, it must interact with everything else in the universe through gravity, and astronomers have found that if too much dark matter collects inside of red giant stars, it can potentially cut their lifetimes in half.


When stars like our sun near the end of their lives, they stop fusing hydrogen in their cores. Instead, the fusion takes place in a shell surrounding a dense core of inert helium – the leftover ash from that nuclear reaction. Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, that core contracts (after all, there’s nothing inside of it generating energy to keep it inflated), heating it up.


Simultaneously, because of the increased core temperature, the rest of the star swells, ballooning to ridiculous proportions as a red giant star.

If dark matter is a particle, it should get inside red giant stars and change the way they behave - Universe Today

Dark matter makes up the vast majority of matter in the universe, but we can’t see it. At least, not directly. Whatever the dark matter is, it must interact with everything else in the universe through gravity, and astronomers have found that if too much dark matter collects inside of red giant...

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