Fuzzy dark matter + galaxy-scale quantum pressure intuition

36:30>> Okay. Fuzzy dark matter means that dark matter is not tiny little like particles, but it's fuzzy in the sense that it's super light, meaning billions of times lighter than the electron. And what does that mean? If it's billions, and that's and that's some of the lightest stuff that it's going to be lighter than quarks, electrons. It's it's at the order of like even lighter than nutrinos type of thing. M >> it is so light that if we were to calculate the quantum mechanics of a particle that's that light the wavelength the debrogley wavelength because you know remember in quantum mechanics every particle is a wave and blah blah blah blah blah well the larger the particle is the shorter the debrogley wavelength

37:11okay so electrons have a wavelength that's like around like ultraviolet x-rayish this thing at 10 the minus22 electron volt mass would have a wavelength that is hundreds of light years big. >> Oh my god. >> Right. Its quantum wavelength if you were to create a quantum wave out of it would be the size of several >> like it would be like a big chunk of the universe. I mean sorry of the galaxy. >> Right. This is so so the wavelength the wavelength would be larger than the distance between them. >> Right. >> Okay. >> Now what does that remind us of? That reminds us of Bose Einstein condensates.

37:55>> Yes. >> Because in a Bose Einstein condensate, the wave the waves of each particle >> pile on top of one another to create a single quantum wave. And that's why they don't like sort of clump together. So what this particular theory is saying is there's some kind of inherent quantum pressure. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> That's at the scale of galaxies >> that is creating like a core >> with a flat density. You've got a Bose Einstein condensate of this fuzzy dark matter particle that is at the size of a galaxy and that's why you don't get a cousin. >> Yeah, that's so >> it's so fascinating. So this this could be, you know, this um candidate dark galaxy could be a proving ground

38:35>> for something like fuzzy dark matter. It's very interesting >> from my layman's perspective. I like I like only because we've so recently talked about uh Bose Einstein condensate. So, I have a mental model of what that actually means. >> And so, I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds right." >> Yeah, that sounds about right. That would be so cool. Imagine a a particle whose quantum wavelength is the size of a galaxy. >> That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. >> Very cool. >> So, I mean, so this is this is quite a big deal in, you know, in that you I'm curious. I would be curious to see >> how other folks and institutions begin to sort of digest and interpret the

39:16paper. But I think like we were talking about earlier, there are certain things that happen when it happens. It's like, okay, all the big guns point over there. >> Let's point over there. >> Um, you think it has the potential to reach that threshold? >> I think so. I mean, I mean, we know where it is. >> Yeah, we know we know like sort of the base spectrum spectrometry data. So, I can I can imagine there's going to be a lot of follow-up studies >> on this from all the top telescopes and institutions >> cuz why not? >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a testing ground for like particle physics in some sense. >> Yes. >> Right. >> Yes. >> Which is very cool. >> This is very very cool. This is very very good. This this was out of uh the astrophysical journal letters.

39:58>> Um and we have our institutions here. This would have been because I want to make sure we cover who did the paper for this. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> It was uh I'm just pulling this up now. >> Yeah. So is in astrophysical journal letters and it includes oh several institutions. Yeah, it's usually it's usually several institutions. >> There's a lot of >> but if we want to name a few, University of Toronto is a big one. >> Yes. >> Um yeah, University of Toronto is one of the big ones. >> Yes. And this was in collaboration >> and Yale because like you know it's the >> the these guys love that ultra >> dark you know diffuse stuff. University

40:40of Santa Cruz, California, Santa Cruz. >> So, yeah, >> big shout outs to all the team. This is a really interesting story. I mean, I I still continue to be so fascinated by dark matter. I know friend of the pod Dan Gilman has dedicated his life >> and he he did a postto at the University of Toronto. So, I wonder if um he knows some of these guys. >> I'll tell him to I'll tell him to send >> share it Dan share it with the the team and if folks want to give us any follow-ups, comments, or corrections, please let us know. Great astrophysics first story on dark matter. kind of continuation on our Cloud9 story which was fascinating and well worth the watch if you haven't seen it to get a little bit deeper into that use case where the cluster does not reach the level where

41:20it can produce stars and so it remains sort of this like empty >> the the relic cloud 9. So, we're going to move into the rundown now. And for those who are new to the show, we usually cover several main stories where we do a big deep dive, but the rundown