We critically reexamine two possible dark matter candidates within the Standard Model. First, we consider the $uuddss$ hexaquark. Its QCD binding energy could be large enough to make it (quasi)stable. We show that the cosmological dark matter abundance is reproduced thermally if its mass is 1.2 GeV. However, we also find that such a mass is excluded by the stability of oxygen nuclei. Second, we consider the possibility that the instability in the Higgs potential leads to the formation of primordial black holes while avoiding vacuum decay during inflation. We show that the nonminimal Higgs coupling to gravity must be as small as allowed by quantum corrections, |ξH|<0.01. Even so, one must assume that the Universe survived in e¹²⁰ independent regions to fluctuations that lead to vacuum decay with probability $1/2$ each.
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Groß et al. (2018) studied this question.
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