'Cosmic radio' detector could discover dark matter within 15 years

Summary

Credit: Scott Lord from Pexels Published in Nature, scientists at King's College London, Harvard University, UC Berkeley and others have shared the foundation of what they believe will be the most accurate dark matter detector to date. Dark matter is the unobservable form of matter that could make up as much as 85% of mass in the universe, but scientists are not sure exactly what it is. Axions are one of the leading candidates for dark matter. These are tiny, weakly interacting particles that could exist in the universe—responsible for gravitational effects in space which cannot yet be explained. Axions are thought to have a frequency like a wave, but scientists do not know where they exist on the electromagnetic spectrum—though they are thought to range from kilohertz, a frequency that can be heard by humans, to the very high terahertz frequency. In the latest study, researchers explain how a detector, which they dub a cosmic car radio, could alert scientists when it finds the frequency of the axion. Known as an Axion quasiparticle (AQ), the team believe it could help discover dark matter in 15 years. The AQ is designed so its frequency can be transmitted into space, a frequency that would match with the axion. When it identifies and 'tunes in' to that frequency, it will emit very small amounts of light. AQ operates at the highest terahertz frequencies, which many researchers believe to be the most promising place to look for axions. Co-author Dr. David Marsh, Ernest Rutherford Fellow at King's College London, said, "We can now build a dark matter detector that is essentially a cosmic car radio, tuning into the frequencies of the wider galaxy until we find the axion. We already have the technology, now it's just a matter of scale and time." The team believe by creating a much larger piece of AQ material, they can create a functioning detector in five years. After that, they estimate it will take another decade of scanning the spectrum of high frequencies where dark...