arXiv:1907.06674astro-ph.CO
Death and Serious Injury by Dark Matter
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Abstract
Macroscopic dark matter refers to a variety of dark matter candidates that would be expected to (elastically) scatter off of ordinary matter with a large geometric cross-section. A wide range of macro masses $M_X$ and cross-sections $σ_X$ remain unprobed. We show that over a wide region within the unexplored parameter space, collisions of a macro with a human body would result in serious injury or death. We use the absence of such unexplained impacts with a well-monitored subset of the human population to exclude a region bounded by $σ_X \geq 10^{-8} - 10^{-7}$ cm$^2$ and $M_X < 50$ kg. Our results open a new window on dark matter: the human body as a dark matter detector.
In some exotic models, dark matter acts like bullets that are always flying through you, but with a tiny chance could interact and leave something basically like a bullet wound: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.06674
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