A New Force?

Is Dark Matter annihilating itself more vigorously than expected? Recent measurements say “maybe”…

Is a new force at work in the dark sector?

…to do so a “Phi” force might be drawing DM particles together, perhaps implying Dark Matter is a new energy source 5 times more abundant than regular matter. From this arXiv post, by some of the usual suspects in High Energy Physics, Arkani-Hamed et.al.

A different process might cause Black Holes to vanish into Hyperspace, the rate of which can be measured by orbital changes in a Black-Hole binary, XTE J1118+480. (Paper from Tim Johannsen, Arizona U.) Scary thought that most of the Universe’s mass might dribble away into higher dimensions, but higher-dimensional gravity might well allow such. Black Holes aren’t good for much when they’re too big, but they do tend to anchor the Galaxies to their cores and may be the last mass-store when proton-decay kicks in.