Rocks and Stars, Earth and Mars: a Deluge of Distinct Dark Sector Detectors

Abstract

The nature of dark matter remains among the most confounding conundra in modern physics. This thesis studies the potential consequences of the existence of relatively high-mass, strongly-interacting dark matter. In particular, it details this type of dark matter's potential impact on billion-year-old objects, such as the Earth, the Sun, Mars, and minerals buried within the Earth. The existence of some of the dark matter models considered would have had consequences that have not come to pass, such as the destruction of the Earth and Sun, and thus these models can be excluded. Other models studied have consequences that could potentially be detected by future experiments, and thus the work presented in this thesis also points out new methods and phenomena applicable to future dark matter searches.