Speaker
Douglas SPOLYAR
(Fermi Lab)
Description
We have proposed that the first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the Universe may be Dark Stars (DS), powered by dark matter heating rather than by nuclear fusion. The power source is annihilation of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). These WIMPs are among the best motivated dark matter (DM) candidates and may be discovered by ongoing direct or indirect detection searches (e.g. FERMI /GLAST) or at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Dark stars look dramatically different from first stars without DM heating and can last from million to billions of years. Hence, DS should be observationally distinct from standard Pop III stars.
