✨ What if there were two dark matters?

Modern astronomy is faced with a curious contradiction.

On one hand, the center of some dwarf galaxies appears surprisingly low in dark matter concentration, while other observations, via gravitational lenses, show clusters of this matter that are extremely dense.


A promising lead to explain these observations comes from the work of a team from the Purple Mountain Observatory, under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their research indicates that dark matter could be composed of particles with distinct masses, and not a single, unique substance.

According to this model, two types of particles would coexist, one more massive and the other lighter, interacting with each other. Gradually, a mass segregation phenomenon would come into play, attracting heavy particles towards galactic nuclei and repelling lighter ones towards the periphery. An analogous process is known in star clusters, where the most massive stars converge towards the center.

This mechanism offers a unified explanation for several observed phenomena. It generates low-density cores in dwarf galaxies, in agreement with the data. Moreover, in richer environments, it can produce very dense regions responsible for the detected gravitational lensing effects.

This hypothesis also leads to an increased probability of small-scale lensing events, which aligns better with observations than classical theories. Detailed numerical simulations support this view. Thus, seemingly disparate anomalies find a common explanation.


Investigations continue, with previous studies published in Physical Review D and the most recent publication in Science Bulletin. Future astronomical measurements will be able to test this hypothesis. Researchers plan to use these "cosmic magnifying glasses" to verify the multifaceted nature of dark matter.