A ‘cosmic radio’ detector that could potentially discover dark matter in 15 years has been developed by a team of researchers.
Dark matter is widely accepted to be a real phenomenon due to gravitational effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters that provide strong evidence for its presence. It is thought that it could account for around 85% of mass in the universe.
However, it has never been directly detected before because it does not interact with electromagnetic radiation, meaning it neither absorbs, reflects nor emits light, making it invisible.
Scientists at King’s College London, Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and others have shared the foundation of what they believe will be the most accurate dark matter detector to date.
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 that cannot yet be explained.
Axions are thought to...