One hypothesis for the nature of dark matter is that some of it could be self-interacting, meaning the individual particles interact slightly with one another.
Throughout their lifespans of billions of years, material constantly rains on every galaxy from its surroundings. In other words, every galaxy is swimming in an ocean of stuff. This material can include both regular matter and dark matter. When dark matter interacts with itself, this causes the dark matter part of a galaxy to drag slightly behind the normal matter .
This can cause galaxies to have two slightly offset cores: one made of regular matter and one made of dark matter. This offset triggers tidal disruptions throughout the galaxy, potentially even causing the disk of the . Future detailed observations of galaxies may reveal a warp in the disk that only self-interacting dark matter can explain.When giant clusters of galaxies merge, astronomers can look at the wreckage to understand what's inside them. For example, the famous Bullet Cluster shows what happened when two clusters merged: The stars and dark matter passed through each other untouched, while all the loose gas in the clusters slammed into each other in the center of the collision.
The fact that the dark matter is on the outskirts of the system tells us that dark matter does not interact with itself often; otherwise, it would have gotten tangled up in the center alongside the gas. The Bullet Cluster and other clusters like it allow astronomers to place limits on how strongly dark matter can interact with itself.
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