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Dark stars as a cosmic window on a mirror world

A couple of weeks ago, I introduced the concept of a mirror world as a viable option for dark matter. I would like to push this concept further, and discuss how mirror stars made of dark matter (i.e. dark stars) could send us detectable cosmic ray signals.

^{[image credits: @pab.ink]}

Crossing the mirror…

Hidden worlds refer to setups in which the matter content of the universe is split into two sets. The first set (* i.e.* the visible world) consists in all known particles, whilst the second set (i.e. the hidden world) contains new hypothetical particles, the lightest one being dark matter.

In the visible world, the fundamental particles of the Standard Model interact through electromagnetism, the weak and the strong interactions. On the other hand, the hidden particles interact through new interactions (to which the visible particles are insensitive to).

^{[image credits: new 1lluminati (CC BY 2.0)]}

In a mirror world configuration, the hidden world includes copies of each known particle: mirror quarks, mirror electrons, etc.

The mirror particles moreover undergo mirror versions of the Standard Model interactions: mirror electromagnetism, mirror weak and mirror strong interactions.

We hence end up with two independent copies of the Standard Model: a visible one and a mirror one.

As in the visible sector, mirror composite objects (like mirror neutrons and protons, but also mirror stars) can be formed.

The bright and dark side of electromagnetism

^{[image credits: NASA]}

Electromagnetism is a special force: a photon (the mediator of the electromagnetic interactions) does not interact with itself, in contrast with the other interactions.

The same holds for the mirror (or dark) photon.

This has a deep consequence: usual and dark photons mix. On very rare occasions, a visible photon can hence be converted into a dark photon, and vice versa.

A mirror star cosmic ray signal

This photon/dark photon mixing provides a way to the mirror and the visible worlds to communicate. This has many consequences. In particular, visible matter can be captured by a mirror star, which leads to the formation of a nugget of visible matter within the mirror star. Such a nugget could then further collide with mirror objects.

This results in the emission of an X-ray signal that could be detected in space observatories like Gaia or Chandra, as illustrated below.

^{[image credits: arxiv]}

This figure shows the luminosity of the X-ray signature of the mirror star (y-axis) as a function of its temperature (x-axis).

Each colour (orange, red, purple) corresponds to a specific mirror star mass, the orange being a mirror sun. The results for a strong (but not experimentally excluded) photon mixing are represented by dashed lines, and the dotted lines correspond to a 100 times weaker mixing.

The solid lines estimate the distance at which a signal of a given luminosity and temperature could be detected by Gaia (blue) and Chandra (green). In order to understand this figure, let us focus on few examples.

A mirror sun with a large mixing emitting a signal of 10.000.000 degrees could be observed by Chandra if it lies at 50 light years or closer: the top left orange dot stands between the 100 and 10 lightyear green lines.

If the signal temperature is colder (10.000 degrees), then it is up to Gaia to see it, even if it lies much further away: the top right orange dot is much above the 100 lightyear blue line.

Take-home message: mirror star signals

In a mirror world theory, there exists a copy of all Standard Model particles and interactions. Whilst initially secluded from each other, the two copies can communicate by virtue of the properties of the visible and mirror electromagnetism.

As a consequence, mirror stars (the mirror counterpart of our visible stars) can emit X-rays that could be detected by existing space observatories, which could provide a way to detect clear signs of the mirror world (and thus of dark matter that is part of it).

^{PS: This article has been formatted for the steemstem.io front-end. Please see here for a better reading.}

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Comments · 8

@indextrader24(75)· 2521d
Interesting view of the universe.

But where is God?

Is God part of our universe or of the mirrow world?

Or is he part of both worlds?

And if God is part of our universe - is there an "Anti-God" - the devil existing in the mirror world?

If so, isn´t it better to get no contact in any kind to the dark matter of your proposed mirrorworld?

Best regards.
@steemstem(74)· 2523d

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@gijoge(6)· 2523d
Very Interesting idea. Is this (https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.04071) your paper ? $trdo
@sco(65)· 2524d
Science meets science fiction meets fantasy. Crazy shit, and a great read, thanks!
@scienceblocks(68)· 2524d
Ah! Been waiting for this article. My imagination went wilder this time. I Imagined everything from mirror stars to mirror black holes. Though this also popped some curiosities in my head. They may sound a bit far fetched but I will list them anyway.

1st being if mirror starts have temperature like our starts, we can't detect them because mirror photons may not heat normal matter. But if a mirror star and a normal star collided would we notice any hear transfer at all (Though I know for hear transfer you need exchange of kinetic energy, which may not happen because mirror and conventional particles don't interact. But is there any possibility of it.

However, they do interact via gravity I assume. So when a star and mirror star are nearby pre collision they should create tides on surface of stars. Can we measure the tidal forces on far away visible stars? If say would it create something like random erratic dips in intensity of starlight. I mean can something like a tabby star which shows erractic 20℅ dip in light intensity be because of a mirror star around it.

Also, is there a possibility of binary star system with mirror and conventional star. In this case we should see a chaotic star movement without a binary partner to explain it, no?

Finally, say there are mirror white dawrfs. Do you think having more sensitive gravitational wave detector would be able to notice something of they see a mirror and non mirror white drawf interacting?
@imtase(65)· 2524d
Interesting, there are really many ways being studied about dark matter!

Yesterday, I saw someone talking about the fact that the hypothetical Planet 9 of our solar system would be a primordial black hole, beyond Neptune with the size of a tennis/baseball ball that remains from the early days of the universe, and that this could also explain the dark matter because it would be something common in the universe, even if for the moment none could be found yet.

This could also plausibly explain the odd orbits of “trans-Neptunian objects” as a hypothetical planet 9, since the planet 9, if it existed and given its distance from the sun, could only be a errant planet captured by our solar system.

It really seems that our time has nothing to be ashamed of compared to some others, as we seem to be starting to touch major discoveries with our fingertips!
@chappertron(67)· 2524d
Stupid question: Is there a second copy of us in the mirror world based on other physical laws???
@astrophoto.kevin(69)· 2524d
Very interesting theory with the universe mirrored on the "dark side". Unfortunately, I don't quite understand the theory about X-rays. Shouldn't the X-rays also be mirrored and thus have a different energy potential? Simplified, in a negative energy level?