Delicate won’t be the primary phrase that springs to thoughts once you consider the Milky Means. However when Mariangela Lisanti began tinkering with the recipe for our galaxy, she discovered it surprisingly fragile.

Lisanti, a particle physicist at Princeton College, was simulating what would occur if darkish matter – the mysterious stuff thought to account for over 80 per cent of all of the matter within the universe – was extra unique than researchers usually assume. She swapped a small fraction of normal darkish matter with one thing extra complicated. “We thought, we’re solely including 5 per cent, every little thing might be wonderful,” she says. “After which we simply broke the galaxy.”

There may be good motive for such meddling. Because the Eighties, astronomical indicators have pointed in the direction of darkish matter being a single sort of slow-moving particle that doesn’t work together with itself. Particle physicists have gone to nice lengths to seek for that particle. However many years later, it stays a no-show – maybe as a result of darkish matter isn’t how we have now tended to think about it.

Lately, a collection of galactic anomalies has sparked a scramble to discover alternate options. This “complicated” darkish matter could be so simple as sub-atomic particles that bounce off one another, or as difficult as households of darkish particles that type darkish atoms, stars and even galaxies. There’s a daunting number of prospects.

However now, observations of anomalies in our galaxy lastly promise to assist us slender down the choices. And with…