Do Neutron Stars Shine In Dark Matter?

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Neutron stars aren't dark matter--we figured that out a while ago. But new research is telling us that they may be dark matter factories. They may produce the exotic axion, one of the most popular dark matter candidates.

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt Caplan, Anirudh Prabhu, & Matt O'Dowd
Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini & Stephanie Faria
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour
Executive Producer: Andrew Kornhaber
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell

Spacetime is a production of Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.
This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.
© 2024 PBS. All rights reserved.

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[FectacularSpail]

"may last millions of years, or may last only a fraction of a second" I love that sentence, and I really hope we develop experiments to narrow that down a bit.

[chirpter]

9:46 i like these subtitles, because sometimes I forget what was just said or exactly what was meant by it and now I can see it right there. very nice

[saladparfait]

It's like I'm sitting at the front of the classroom

[hihubble]

Just read a book on neutron star coalescence and how they are the factory of a large portion of the heavy elements found in the universe through nucleosythesis. Such an interesting read !

[lavaphile]

If the axion cloud collapse is the source of FRB's, wouldn't that imply that FRB's are omnidirectional? If so, there should be cases where we might be able to detect reflections. The time between the initial FRB and reflections might be long, but information about the universe that could be extracted by analyzing them could be game-changing.

[bobafett]

A huge thank you to you Matt and to the whole Space Time team for making appreciation of reality (with sources) so accessible to us lay persons. Much appriciated! Another well made vid. cheers! :)

[jps]

@13:33 "Them Neutron Stars" sounds like a future Country-Western song title.

"I've been to Memphis bars and lived through countless spars
Was nearly sent to Mars by a Nordic dude named Lars
I've driven loads of cars and earned my share of scars
But she confused me up and down just like them neutron stars"

(Note: I am not from the South, but I tried)

[masterofnonetech]

Finally some movement on the origin of dark matter and possibly an explanation for FRBs... exciting!

[Chris_Goulet]

Loved the Axion detergent logo showing up in the animation!

[jamesharmer]

I first heard about Neutron Stars when I read the eponymous short story by Larry Niven. An interest in nerdy sci-fi has got to be good for something.

[jonwesick]

Robert Klauber's "Student Friendly Quantum Field Theory, Vol 2" has a great discussion of axions and CP violation. He's written the most understandable textbooks on QFT that I've found.

[austinb]

The fact that I (as I'm sure many others) understand this video with complete ease is a testament to the excellent long-term educational service you folks are providing. Love sitting at the front of this grad school classroom over the years!

[orange-micro-fiber]

Can y'all bring back questions? I loved them.

[Joepope]

The people who comes up with that math for this are crazy but the people who code the animations and ability to show it are Insane

[JeeJeeBeats]

that was a great episode. Nice work 😀 💪🏽✨️👍🏼

[rob.parsnips]

If axions and photons are getting transformed into each other in the vicinity of neutron stars, are there any implications for the star’s luminosity? Would observed neutron stars potentially be nearer to Earth than previously thought because axion production is effectively dimming them?

[conrad]

So this sounds interesting, but color me skeptical. Haven't we been predicting the existence of axions for decades & we keep not finding them & keep revising our models that predict them & then we keep not finding them?

[uncleanunicorn]

this dark matter info will immensely help my cloned neanderthal starship captain on a galactic voyage i'm writing about.

[KrunoslavSaho]

I love this channel. I saw your interview with Event Horizon and I checked out your channel. Amazing work.

[joshuaentwistle]

I don't suppose you fancy doing an episode on, "Where's Left for Dark Matter"? I'm interested in what energy scales and particle types are still viable for Dark Matter, what experiments have gone before to set those bounds, and what is to come to further close down on the elusive stuff.