How do you seek something that does not absorb, reflect or emit light? A team of researchers has developed a new way of using atomic watches aboard GPS satellites and an ultra stable laser network to look for dark matter.
“Despite many theories and experiments, scientists have not yet found dark matter, which we consider the” glue “of the galaxy that keeps everything together,” says Ashlee Caddell, a doctoral student at the University of Queensland in Australia, which co -Hell the study Posted in Physical review letters.
When we look at the universe, the visible things we see and interact is a normal matter. But to make sense of the observations of gravity inside and around stars, galaxies and groups of galaxies, something else must be there too. And much of that.
This is a dark matter and its thinking to represent 85% of the matter in the universe. The problem is that it is almost impossible to detect, because it only interacts very weakly with ordinary matter through gravity.
The new study tried to detect a type of dark matter model known as “ultralight dark matter.”
“The dark matter in this case acts as a wave, because its mass is very, very low,” says Caddel.
They did this analyzing data from an ultra stable laser network connected by fiber optic cables on Earth, as well as 2 atomic watches aboard GPS satellites.
“We use separate watches to try to measure changes in the wave, which would be seen as clocks that show different times or ticking at different speeds, and this effect is strengthened if the watches are more separate,” says Caddell.
“When comparing precision measurements through vast distances, we identify the subtle effects of dark matter oscillating fields that would otherwise be canceled in conventional configurations.
“Emotionally, we were able to look for signs of dark matter models that universally interact with all atoms, something that has eluded traditional experiments.”
The physical and co -author of UQ, Dr. Benjamin Roberts, says that the study brings researchers to understand one of the most elusive and fundamental components of the universe.
“Scientists can now investigate a broader range of dark matter scenarios and perhaps answer some fundamental questions about the universe’s fabric,” says Roberts.
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