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The oldest radiation in existence originates from the cosmic microwave background. This primordial light, stamped onto the expanse of the cosmos when it was a mere 380,000 years old, provided the foundation for all of the structures we observe today. (Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration – D. Ducros)ShareShare by:
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Two of the universe’s most perplexing elementary particles could be clashing invisibly throughout the vastness of space — an occurrence which may offer a solution to a prominent and persistent puzzle within the prevalent cosmological model.
These two enigmatic constituents — dark matter and neutrinos (sometimes referred to as “ethereal particles”) — exist everywhere across the cosmos, yet our understanding of them remains limited. In a report issued on Jan. 2 in the periodical Nature Astronomy, an assembly of worldwide scholars discovered evidence indicating that dark matter and neutrinos might engage in collisions, thus exchanging impetus during the procedure.
This unforeseen interplay might serve to clarify the relative scarcity of dense sectors, like galaxies, throughout the universe when compared to projections — suggesting that the cosmos possesses fewer conglomerates than anticipated by experts in the field, according to a declaration made by the researchers.
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Dark matter and neutrinos are still a mystery
Dark matter refers to the ambiguous, non-visible essence that makes up 85% of the total mass in the universe. As implied by its designation, dark matter neither emits nor reflects electromagnetic radiation, thus its validation has been inferred solely indirectly via its gravitational presence, determined through celestial evaluations.
Neutrinos represent subatomic entities bearing exceptionally small measurements and devoid of any electric charge, resulting in rare interaction occurrences with other entities. They originate as a result of diverse nuclear operations, including stellar combination and supernovas, produced in vast abundance. As previously documented by Live Science, roughly 100 billion neutrinos traverse each square centimeter of your form every split second.
However, the standard cosmological paradigm, denoted as the lambda cold dark matter model (lambda-CDM), predicts that dark matter and neutrinos do not engage with each other. This predominant framework strives to theoretically rationalize the expansive architecture of the cosmos.
Cosmological conundrum
However, the current study presents fresh substantiation suggesting a potential interaction between dark matter and neutrinos, as proposed by prior investigators during the preceding two decades.
Should an exchange and transit of momentum between dark matter and neutrinos take place as a result of such collisions, this discovery would stimulate a reevaluation of the lambda-CDM framework. Furthermore, such encounters might assist in elucidating the “S8 tension,” which reflects a disparity between the anticipated and the observed “clumpiness” of the universe.
“This tension does not mean the standard cosmological model is wrong, but it may suggest that it is incomplete,” Eleonora Di Valentino, study co-author and a senior research fellow at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., explained in the statement. “Our study shows that interactions between dark matter and neutrinos could help explain this difference, offering new insight into how structure formed in the Universe.”
This disparity arises from research conclusions indicating that the contemporary cosmos exhibits a diminished compaction compared to earlier estimates grounded in observations from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which constitutes the initial radiation emitted when the cosmos reached approximately 380,000 years in age.
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“The statement that cosmic structures are ‘less clumped’ is best understood in a statistical sense, rather than as a change in the appearance of individual galaxies or clusters. It refers to a reduced efficiency in the growth of cosmic structures over time,” study co-author William Giarè, a cosmologist at the University of Hawaii, told Live Science via email.
Analyzing converging proof threads
The researchers endeavored to unify results extracted from energy variances and density variations in the CMB alongside baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) — namely pressure pulses “solidified” since cosmic genesis — with more current findings regarding the universe’s extensive structure.
Data collected from the early universe are obtained from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope situated in Chile, and the Planck space telescope overseen by the European Space Agency, engineered to analyze the CMB. Data pertaining to later cosmic stages are sourced from the Victor M. Blanco Telescope within Chile and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which represents a two-decade-long initiative designed to construct a three-dimensional model that represents millions of galaxies stretching across excess of 11 billion light-years.
The researchers additionally implemented cosmic shear data obtained from the Dark Energy Survey. Cosmic shear refers to the contortion of remote celestial bodies arising from slight gravitational lensing effects, occurring whenever considerable foreground systems warp the very texture of space-time, modifying pathways of light transmitted from such far-off objects headed toward our sensors.
Finally, the researchers aggregated all said data, simulating the evolutionary history of the universe. As they took into account collisions transpiring between dark matter and neutrinos and related momentum transmissions, the simulations yielded a modeled cosmic likeness that more closely matches actual findings.
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Despite these promising indications, caution is still merited given that the interaction involving dark matter and neutrinos presents only a 3-sigma significance level, denoting a 0.3% prospect of this finding being purely coincidental. Though not attaining the standard 5-sigma criteria employed within scientific communities, the interaction remains meaningfully substantial enough for additional exploration as confirmation may translate into “transformational progress throughout both cosmology plus elementary particle physics”—potentially resolving the cosmic clumpiness enigma.
“The final verdict will come from upcoming large sky surveys, such as those from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and more precise theoretical work,” research team leader Sebastian Trojanowski, a theoretical physicist at the National Centre for Nuclear Research in Poland, explained in a separate statement. “These will allow us to determine whether we are witnessing a new discovery in the dark sector or whether our cosmological models require further adjustment. However, each of these scenarios brings us closer to solving the mystery of dark matter.”
Article Sources
Zu, L., Giarè, W., Zhang, C. et al. A solution to the S8 tension through neutrino–dark matter interactions. Nat Astron (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02733-1
Ivan FarkasLive Science Contributor
Ivan is a long-time writer who loves learning about technology, history, culture, and just about every major “ology” from “anthro” to “zoo.” Ivan also dabbles in internet comedy, marketing materials, and industry insight articles. An exercise science major, when Ivan isn’t staring at a book or screen he’s probably out in nature or lifting progressively heftier things off the ground. Ivan was born in sunny Romania and now resides in even-sunnier California.
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