14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past couple of decades, astronomers and astrophysicists have been searching for the elusive dark matter with everything at their disposal. From special satellites to advanced underground facilities buried deep within disused mines, detectors for this form of matter are nearly everywhere. In spite of these efforts, it would appear that success is going out of its way to avoid scientists, who are becoming increasingly frustrated for not being able to observe the thing that is thought to make up about one quarter of the entire Universe. Now, some propose a paradigm shift in the approach to this research.
According to a new theoretical study from experts at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, it may become possible to discover at least some of the traits associated with the particles thought to make up dark matter, by using this approach. The physicists at the DOE facility, which is managed by the Stanford University, say that tabletop studies on very small chunks of matter could hint at new avenues for research that larger detection experiments could take. By combining these three approaches (space-based studies, large experiments, and tabletop investigations), it may be possible to accelerate this type of studies, the SLAC team believes.
“Tabletop experiments can be extremely illuminating. We can make observations in tabletop experiments that help us figure the deeper mysteries of the Universe,” explains Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES) condensed matter theorist Shoucheng Zhang. He was in charge of presenting the new results at the American Physical Society meeting in Portland, Oregon, alongside colleagues Rundong Li, Jing Wang and Xiao-Liang Qi. Details of the new approach were also published in the March 7 online issue of the respected scientific publication Nature Physics.
In the paper, the researchers explain how tabletop experiments could allow for the detection of axions. These are very small elementary particles, which are hypothesized to carry no electrical charge, and to have a very small mass. Physicists believe that it may be one of the particles making up dark matter, and are as such excited about the prospect of identifying it without the need to construct massive underground detectors, and their afferent isolation layers. To this day, the axion has yet to be demonstrated experimentally. “If we 'see' an axion in a tabletop experiment, it will be extremely illuminating. It will help shed light on the dark matter mystery,” Zhang says.