An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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A → cosmological model that attributes the formation of structures in the → early Universe to an exotic particle (→ cold dark matter) which was → non-relativistic at the time of → decoupling. According to this model, CDM began clumping together soon after the → Big Bang, while the → baryonic matter was still coupled with the → photons, and prevented to condense. Smaller → clumps of dark matter merged to form larger and larger clumps, and when the normal visible matter had decoupled from the photons, at the → recombination era (380,000 years after the Big Bang), it collapsed onto these dark matter clumps. In this way, the dark matter clumps acted as seeds for galaxy formation.

→ cold; → dark; → matter; → theory.