The article below that I came across recently summarizes the purely hypothetical notion that dark matter may cause cancer. This "dark matter," which supposedly fills the universe (and may in fact not even exist, the article states) might actually produce a particularly virulent form of radiation that pervades the universe. And it may be a form of radiation that may be especially nasty in causing cancer-forming mutations to occur in living organisms, if that radiation is traveling through space and just happens to hit living tissue on a life-bearing planet.
(Yeah, I know, it sounds like something on the front page of a supermarket newspaper, but the article is from "MIT Technology Review," a responsible physics publication, so presumably it's for real).
Specifically, it says "... dark matter poses an entirely new form of radiation threat and could cause the mutations that lead to cancer."
But it's all very theoretical, as noted, and most of the technicalities that the article discusses, ones that would be needed to make it all possible, are certainly over my head.
Especially when the article says "... another idea is that the universe could have an invisible partner made of exact mirrors of all the particles known to exist today ... " and this "mirror matter," as they call it, could interact with "normal" matter to produce "... a completely new type of radiation hazard."
Oh well, even if it's all true, there's absolutely nothing any of us can do about
any of it, except to be aware of it.
And it's sure nothing to lose sleep over. Maybe it might cause a bad dream or two, but not much else.
But it's interesting in that it's another example of how academic speculation may be on to something.
And then again maybe not.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541641/could-dark-matter-cause-cancer/