Dear All,
not only in our university, but almost in all well known to me lectures about Dark Matter, MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) are rather incidentally discussed while candidates as WIMPs, Axions or Sterile Neutrinos dominate the talks.
Is this - with nowadays knowledge and theoretical assumptions - justified?
With the description of a great abundance of primordial black holes MACHOs do serve a hypothetical answer for almost any questions like rotation curves, radial velocitiy, intermediate black holes, missing-satellite-problem, too-big-to-fail-problem, ...
Of course it is a highly speculative topic. BUT the WIMPs are too (if not even more). So shouldn't we - in accordance with the Principle of Occam's razor - favor MACHOs instead, because they are able to solve a lot of problems at once and at the same time we don't need to extend the Standard Model for introducing them?
Why do WIMPs and particle-like entities dominate? Did i miss a hint (for example some fundamental advantages of this models?). Or is it a general problem ultimately based on ignorance to a great extent?
Thank you
I agree with you that Occam's Razor privileges MACHOs as candidates for dark matter over WIMPs. The fact that MACHOs are compatible with the standard model seems to be an extremely strong point in their favor.
The best way to assess the possibility would be to start by surveying the observational evidence for dark matter and consider what fits all the resulting constraints. For example how would MACHOs as dark matter explain the evidence from primordial deuterium abundance?
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