Deep physics from Small Bodies : Dark Matter in the Solar System

T. Marshall Eubanks
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Asteroid Initiatives LLC, E-mail:tme@asteroidinitiatives.com

Abstract for a seminar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 3 PM on Tuesday, 25 February 2014.

February 4, 2014
Dark Matter (DM) is rarely considered to be important in the formation and history of the Solar system. However, under very general assumptions there would be signicant primordial capture of DM due to gravitational potential changes during the collapse of proto-planetary nebulae. For simple models of galactic DM velocity distributions and a giant molecular cloud mass comparable to the Orion-A star-forming region, the total amount of primordially captured DM for a Sun-type star would be 108 to 106 M . Almost any sort of DM would be subject to primordial capture, including both microscopic DM, such as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), and macroscopic DM, such as Compact Ultra-Dense Objects (CUDOs) and Primordial Black Holes (PBH). Primordial capture can provide stringent tests of wide classes of DM theories and also strongly inuence theories of planetary formation. PBH, for example, would consume ordinary matter in the proto-planetary nebula, and (together with similar limits from stellar formation from Cappella et al. 2013) can thus be basically excluded as a major DM constituent for any substellar mass range. Radiochemistry reveals that material in the early solar system was subjected to multiple episodes of high-energy radiation. Primordially-captured DM that either self annihilates or (for macroscopic DM) is comprised of matter and antimatter may be able to account for these heating and high-energy radiation episodes, with a total energy release comparable to that available from Deuterium fusion. Conversely, it may be possible to rule out non-annihilating microscopic DM for a wide range of models through celestial mechanics limits (currently 1012 M ) on spheroidal DM collections in the inner Solar System. Macroscopic quark matter nugget CUDOs are another viable explanation for dark matter, with interesting implications for the Solar System. The Zhitnitsky quark nugget DM theory predicts a maximum nugget mass 4 1010 kg, a suitable mass to resolve the meter barrier of planetary formation, leading to a prediction of 1

quark nuggets residing today in the cores of the Sun, planets and asteroids. Sufciently small bodies would thus be bound gravitationally by their relatively massive cores, and thus could be spun up to very high rotation rates by radiation pressure torques before disruption. In the Zhitnitsky theory, such strange asteroids would have radii of 100 m; the predicted population of fast rotating asteroids in that size range is indeed found in the Near Earth Objects (NEO) requiring (if gravitationally bound) core masses of 1010 - 1012 kg, overlapping with the stable mass range predicted by the Zhitnitsky theory. The interpretation of small very fast rotating asteroids as strange objects is complicated by the non-negligible cohesion expected from van deer Waals forces for such small bodies; at least for the fastest rotators it is hard to see how these would be sufcient to protect small fast rotators against disruption for their expected duration as NEO. The best way to test this strange asteroid prediction may be through spacecraft examination of small NEO, which should be kept in consideration as plans are developed for the robotic and human exploration and mining of the NEO. The discovery of even a single massive quark nugget in the Solar System would of course be of immersive scientic value, and well worth direct examination by spacecraft.