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 ${{d}}^{* }({\rm{2380}})$ hexaquark. In this first study, we show stable ${d}^{\ast }(2380)$ 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.

A new possibility for light-quark dark matter