Review of Observational Evidence for Dark Matter in the Universe and in upcoming searches for Dark Stars

Abstract

Over the past decade, a consensus picture has emerged in which roughly a quarter of the universe consists of dark matter. The observational evidence for the existence of dark matter is reviewed: rotation curves of galaxies, weak lensing measurements, hot gas in clusters, primordial nucleosynthesis and microwave background experiments. In addition, a new line of research on Dark Stars is presented, which suggests that the first stars to exist in the universe were powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion: the observational possibilities of discovering dark matter in this way are discussed.