A hypothetical neutrino that does not interact through the weak force could be the source of a recently detected x-ray emission line coming from galaxy clusters. However, previous models using this so-called “sterile” neutrino as a form of dark matter were not able to satisfy constraints from cosmological observations. Now, writing in Physical Review Letters, Kevork Abazajian of the University of California, Irvine, shows that a sterile neutrino with a mass of  7 kilo-electron-volts (keV) could be a viable dark matter candidate that both explains the new x-ray data and solves some long-standing problems in galaxy structure formation.


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