A dark star is a type of star that may have existed early in the universe before conventional stars were able to form. The stars would be composed mostly of normal matter, like modern stars, but a high concentration of neutralino dark matter within them would generate heat via annihilation reactions between the dark-matter particles. This heat would prevent such stars from collapsing into the relatively compact sizes of modern stars and therefore prevent nuclear fusion among the normal matter atoms from being initiated.
Under this model, a dark star is predicted to be an enormous cloud of hydrogen and helium ranging between 4 and 2000 astronomical units in diameter and with a surface temperature low enough that the emitted radiation would be invisible to the naked eye.
In the unlikely event that dark stars have endured to the modern era, they could be detectable by their emissions of gamma rays, neutrinos, and antimatter and would be associated with clouds of cold molecular hydrogen gas that normally wouldn’t harbor such energetic particles.
Famous quotes containing the words dark and/or star:
“This, it will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs. Rowlandson’s capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, but from this July afternoon, and under that mild exterior, those times seemed as remote as the irruption of the Goths. They were the dark age of New England.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O star of morning and of liberty!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)