Dark matter ignition of type Ia supernovae
  Recent studies of low redshift type Ia supernovae (SNIa) indicate that half
explode from less than Chandrasekhar mass white dwarfs, implying ignition must
proceed from something besides the canonical criticality of Chandrasekhar mass
SNIa progenitors. We show that $1-100$ PeV mass asymmetric dark matter, with
imminently detectable nucleon scattering interactions, can accumulate to the
point of self-gravitation in a white dwarf and collapse, shedding gravitational
potential energy by scattering off nuclei, thereby heating the white dwarf and
igniting the flame front that precedes SNIa. We combine data on SNIa masses
with data on the ages of SNIa-adjacent stars. This combination reveals a $2.8
\sigma$ inverse correlation between SNIa masses and ignition ages, which could
result from increased capture of dark matter in 1.4 versus 1.1 solar mass white
dwarfs. Future studies of SNIa in galactic centers will provide additional
tests of dark-matter-induced type Ia ignition. Remarkably, both bosonic and
fermionic SNIa-igniting dark matter also resolve the missing pulsar problem by
forming black holes in $\gtrsim 10$ Myr old pulsars at the center of the Milky
Way.
