Ghosts of the Universe: Neutrinos as Dark Matter express
For nearly a century, astronomers have watched galaxies spin as if held together by invisible mass. Fritz Zwicky first noticed it, and Vera Rubin precisely measured the speeds of stars at the edges. The explanation — dark matter, a mysterious substance whose gravity stops stars from flying apart.
A new hypothesis: the ghostly nature of neutrinos itself creates the missing mass. In curved spacetime, different types of neutrinos continuously morph into each other, like ghosts changing guises. These transformations generate energy, which on galactic scales amplifies the gravitational pull. So silent ghosts become the invisible glue holding galaxies together.
Original abstract
as written by the authors arXiv:2605.26134
We review recent results showing that, within the framework of quantum field theory in curved spacetime, the semiclassical energy-momentum tensor of the neutrino flavor vacuum fulfills the equation of state of dust and cold dark matter. By considering spherically symmetric spacetimes in the weak field approximation, the flavor vacuum is shown to contribute as a Yukawa correction to the Newtonian potential. We discuss how this modified potential provides a mechanism to account for the flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies. In this perspective, neutrino mixing is presented as a viable contributing factor to the dark matter content of the universe.
Every second, about 100 billion neutrinos from the Sun pass through your pinky fingernail.