Dark Matter as an Energy Communication Structure

[Cliff]

I had this idea that I thought was interesting and wanted to share it with more knowledgeable people to see what they thought. I consider myself less than a physics newbie so please go easy on me if this is ridiculous or explained somewhere and I just didn’t find it. Anyway, the gist of the idea is this;

Dark matter is basically an energy communications/transmission network for light energy made of de-energized photons. Since photons have no mass when they're de-energized they're undetectable. We don’t see photons move, but rather we see energy transferring from one photon to another. That energy transfer is so fast that it looks as if it’s the same photon moving but it’s the energy that’s moving by activating and then leaving countless photons as it goes.

Transactions from photon to photon alone don’t lose energy and because dark matter is itself just de-energized photons moving energy through its existing structure doesn’t cause energy loss. However, if the energy must pass through other kinds of particles some of it is absorbed by them and usually expressed as heat.

I’ve written out more about the implications this has on the double slit experiment, but I didn’t want to throw a mountain of words at anybody if the base idea doesn’t have any merit.

[joigus]

5 minutes ago, Cliff said:

Since photons have no mass when they're de-energized they're undetectable.

(The answer in my emphasis.)

[Janus]

Your "de-energized" photons sound like a rehash of the Aether, a concept abandoned long ago.  And if light transmission is due to energy be transferred through this medium, and this medium is also dark matter, then how does light travel between galaxies, when dark matter tends to collect in clouds around galaxies.

And, as joigus alluded to, if this sea of de-energized photons has neither mass nor energy of its own, then how does it generate the gravitational field needed to account for the observations that led to the need for dark matter in the first place?

[Genady]

1 hour ago, Cliff said:

Dark matter is ... made of de-energized photons. ... when they're de-energized they're undetectable. 

Photons interact with electrons. These 'de-energized photons' would interact with electrons, pick up some energy from the electrons, and would not be 'de-energized' anymore. They would be regular photons, which would be detectable.

[joigus]

Trying to summarise: We need something massive/abundant enough. We need something that doesn't interact at all in any other way, except gravitationally. We need something that clusters significantly --very unlike photons, has some mass--, but not too much -> little dissipation --very unlike ordinary matter.

From what I gather, this leaves no alternatives but:

(1) Exotic particles that are not coupled to anything in the standard model and are massive, copiously produced during the big bang, or combination of massive and copiously produced, so as to yield the desired gravitational effect. And stable once they've been produced -> existence of lightest exotic particle.

Or --a quite conservative, but more compelling idea, IMO,

(2) Massive right-handed neutrinos that give a very small mass to the left-handed neutrinos as per see-saw mechanism, via interaction with the Higgs + plausible mechanism why one of the 3 RH neutrinos cannot decay.

The first alternative requires going beyond the SM in a significant and adventurous way. One would have to find different fits with mass/abundance to make it work.

The second one requires generalising the SM ever so slightly. And there exists a proposal for it that's being developed and which predicts that one of the three LH neutrinos must be massless. N. Turok, L. Boyle, K. Finn et al.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08930

https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08928

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-hPmjjjC-I (Public Lecture)

I hope I didn't forget anything important.

[MigL]

Massless phtons at 'rest' are not supported by any realisic model, unless they are non-existent ...

[Cliff]

Thank everyone for their feedback. I now realize using a photon for my idea was definitely wrong.

The core concept was more that dark matter is some kind of structure for combining with and transferring energy. When it's not transferring energy it is still there but undetectable for some reason. Maybe it phases in and out of this dimension until it's activated. Maybe it always has to be moving at a speed we can't detect until it "syncs" with whatever energy is passed to it. Like tuning a guitar string to the proper note. So <dark matter> + <X type of energy> = <some particle>. So a particle never actually moves it's energy is just transferred so quickly it seems like it is. 

I think I understand you, Joigus, and the idea isn't possible in general. It might not even make sense. It's probably clear I don't have a full grasp of what "energy" actually is and I'm not sure the way I'm writing about it makes sense. Again, saying I'm a novice is kind, so thanks for the information. Gotta start somewhere. 

Edited March 3, 2023 by Cliff