Science

Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) slams other particles together hoping to create some dark matter in the process.

Now physicists have proposed two new methods to trawl this slim remaining territory, which has been out of reach to experiments so far.

Yet such experiments will require research and development into what superconducting aluminum or superfluid helium detectors will actually look like, and where they should build such a detector.

Now physicists have proposed two new methods to trawl this slim remaining territory, which has been out of reach to experiments so far.

Scientists who have hunted for decades for the stuff that comprises most of the cosmos’ mass are starting to worry that they are looking in the wrong places.

After the latest null results came out this summer from the most sensitive search yet for the particles thought to make up dark matter, a limited theoretical range of masses and other characteristics remains viable for the particles.

In place of traditional dark matter detector materials, Zurek’s team’s first method uses superconducting aluminum, a substance whose electrons are free to move without any resistance.

Dark matter searches to date have mostly searched for “weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPs), theoretical particles that would weigh between 1 giga-electron volt (GeV) and 1 tera-electron volt (TeV), or between one and 1,000 times the mass of a proton.

Dark matter searches to date have mostly searched for “weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPs), theoretical particles that would weigh between 1 giga-electron volt (GeV) and 1 tera-electron volt (TeV), or between one and 1,000 times the mass of a proton.

“The WIMP paradigm is under siege” after so many failures to find them have limited the number of places they could still be hiding, says Kathryn Zurek of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

Zurek led two recent studies proposing new ways of searching for dark matter in the form of particles that would be lighter than WIMPs, such as so-called asymmetric dark matter.

An incoming dark matter particle could interact with a helium nucleus, causing a chain reaction that sends a set of phonons, quantum sound waves, to TESs.

Scientists who have hunted for decades for the stuff that comprises most of the cosmos’ mass are starting to worry that they are looking in the wrong places.