We know pretty well what matter is and how it interacts with the others.
Dark matter interacts through gravity but not light. Beyond that I haven’t heard much else.
And lastly anti-matter has an opposite charge and interacts with matter through annihilation. I think I remember hearing that it would react with dark matter the same way.
So my question is, does anti-dark matter exist, and what are it’s properties?
That’s the answer I was really wondering about. If dark matter doesn’t annihilate with anti-matter then it could potentionally be used for anti-matter containment?
The problem with matter that doesn’t interact electromagnetically is that everything else can pass right through it. (That’s why dark matter theoretically remains in halos around galaxies instead of getting incorporated into galactic discs via drag from other matter.)
If dark matter can only interact via gravity, it can only attract other matter toward it (albeit very weakly)—including both matter and antimatter. So it can’t keep matter and antimatter apart.
You’d also have no way of manipulating the dark matter itself, except through gravity.
Well darn…
So if there were a small “lump” of dark matter in front of me, it would be invisible, and I could pass through it (and it through me) without noticing it was there?
Right. It’s estimated that there’s about an asteroid’s worth of dark matter passing through the solar system at any given moment, so it’s possible that that has already happened.