Meteor-hunting strategies might be tailored to hunt for dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up round 85% of the universe’s matter however stays invisible, researchers suggest in a brand new paper.
Dark matter does not work together with electromagnetic radiation, that means it does not take up or emit gentle like strange matter; the universe incorporates 5 instances extra dark matter than strange matter. To date, astronomers haven’t been capable of immediately observe dark matter; they will solely infer its presence by means of its gravitational affect, which prevents galaxies from ripping aside as they spin.
Scientists aren’t even certain if the particles that make up dark matter are huge or small; they simply understand it is not made up of protons and neutrons just like the matter on Earth.
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“One of many causes dark matter is so onerous to detect might be as a result of the particles are so huge,” John Beacom, a professor of physics and astronomy at The Ohio State College and co-author of the examine, mentioned in a statement (opens in new tab). “If the dark-matter mass is small, then the particles are widespread, but when the mass is giant, the particles are uncommon.”
Within the new paper, Beacom and his colleagues suggest that if dark matter particles are huge, the identical know-how used to trace meteors may detect dark matter because it passes by means of Earth’s ambiance.
Presently, scientists look principally for tiny dark-matter particles with small plenty. The goal of the brand new analysis, the examine authors mentioned, is to widen that dark matter hunt by serving to to characterize large-mass dark matter particles that may not be noticed with conventional detectors.
When meteors go by means of Earth’s atmosphere, they go away a type of radiation known as ionization deposits that, in flip, go away behind free electrons and charged atoms able to conducting electrical energy. Electromagnetic waves launched by meteor-tracking radar bounce off these free electrons, that means that, in principle, they may do the identical for electrons left by dark matter particles — in impact, turning Earth’s ambiance right into a titanic dark-matter-particle detector.
Contemplating this technique has been used to trace meteors for many years, Beacom mentioned he is stunned these programs and the information they’ve gathered have not been employed within the hunt for dark matter.
The group’s proposed dark matter searching system may complement and enhance upon present cosmological dark matter search methods.
“Present cosmology methods are fairly delicate, however they do not have a option to verify their very own work,” Beacom mentioned. “This can be a completely new method, so if scientists are uncertain about what they’ve detected, a sign from cosmology might be checked intimately with the radar method.”
The group’s paper is posted to the preprint server arXiv.
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