Can Dark Matter Be Explained By a Link to a Fifth Dimension?

The standard model of physics can’t accommodate some observed phenomena, notes Popular Mechanics. Yet “In a new study, scientists say they can explain dark matter by positing a particle that links to a fifth dimension.” While the “warped extra dimension” (WED) is a trademark of a popular physics model first introduced in 1999, this research, published in The European Physical Journal C, is the first to cohesively use the theory to explain the long-lasting dark matter problem within particle physics… The scientists studied fermion masses, which they believe could be communicated into the fifth dimension through portals, creating dark matter relics and “fermionic dark matter” within the fifth dimension. Could dimension-traveling fermions explain at least some of the dark matter scientists have so far not been able to observe? “We know that there is no viable [dark matter] candidate in the [standard model of physics],” the scientists say, “so already this fact asks for the presence of new physics….” This pocket “dark sector” is one possible way to explain the huge amount of dark matter that, so far, has eluded detection using any traditional measurements designed for the standard model of physics. Fermions jammed through a portal to a warped fifth dimension could be “acting as” dark matter… All it would take to identify fermionic dark matter in a warped fifth dimension would be the right kind of gravitational wave detector, something growing in prevalence around the world. Indeed, the answer to the dark matter conundrum could be just around the corner.