interesting dark-matter candidate

I'm now at a cosmology conference:
https://indico.cern.ch/event/736594/overview

One reason to go to a conference is to hear about interesting things one
might have missed. For me, probably the most interesting talk was the
penultimate one, an update on these publications concerning a novel
dark-matter candidate:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.0560
https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.1627
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10...6/496/1/012023
https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04206

There are many connections between particle physics and astronomy, but
this is closer than most, is a really novel idea, makes clear
predictions, explains very many (otherwise not closely related) things
with a simple idea, and has already had some predictions confirmed.


While I've been to other conferences which covered a wide range of
topics, at this one there were intentionally no sessions on specific
topics, but, say, a talk on observational astronomy could be followed by
one on theoretical particle physics.

I can't write a summary here, of course, but one general theme is that
while large-scale cosmology is more or less solved, it is becoming even
more clear that many things about galaxies, particularly dwarf galaxies,
are not understood, and it is unclear which of many options is the way
forward. One aspect of this is dark matter, and both the lack of direct
(or indirect) detections as well as the discovery of a light Higgs seems
to be swinging the pendulum away from WIMPs as dark matter to other
ideas. Also, it might turn out that more than one of the alternatives
to WIMPs is correct.