A new possibility for light-quark dark matter

Despite many decades of study the physical origin of 'dark matter' (DM) in the Universe remains elusive. In this letter we calculate the properties of a completely new DM candidate-Bose-Einstein condensates formed from a recently discovered bosonic particle in the light-quark sector, the d*(2380) hexaquark. In this first study, we show stable d*(2380) Bose-Einstein condensates could form in the primordial early universe, with a production rate sufficiently large that they are a plausible new candidate for DM. Some possible astronomical signatures of such DM are also presented.