Dark Matter Decay? - Roger Penrose

The talk was given at the "Quantum Physics and Gravity" workshop at the ESI in Vienna on June 20, 2017 (http://quark.itp.tuwien.ac.at/~grumil.... Summary: In the cosmological scheme of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), the equations governing the crossover form each aeon to the next demand the creation of a dominant new scalar material that is postulated to be dark matter. In order that this material does not build up from aeon to aeon, it is taken to decay away completely over the history of the aeon. The dark matter particles (erebons) would be expected to behave as essentially classical particles of around a Planck mass, interacting only gravitationally, and their decay would be mainly responsible for the (~scale invariant) temperature fluctuations in the CMB of the succeeding aeon. In our own aeon, erebon decay ought to be detectable as impulsive events observable by gravitational wave detectors. Related paper by Penrose: https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.04169 In the media: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/n...