Dark Matter

Large clouds of dark matter have been indirectly detected before, but it should also form smaller clumps. Now Hubble observations have detected evidence of these small clumps for the first time, lending weight to a prevailing dark matter hypothesis.

The hunt for dark matter – the mysterious stuff that seems to outnumber regular matter by a ratio of five to one – has so far turned up no direct trace. Now, researchers at CERN have tried a new approach, using another strange substance – antimatter.

Rather than trying to see dark matter, a new experimental design from Stockholm University listens for it instead, using an “axion radio.”

Although it outnumbers regular matter by a ratio of five to one, dark matter is frustratingly elusive, and efforts to hunt down different types of candidate particles have revealed no direct trace. Now, researchers from Max Planck have proposed a new hypothetical particle that might be behind dark matter – the superheavy gravitino – and outlined just how we might find them.

Few things are as mysterious as dark matter. Now, a physicist from Johns Hopkins University has outlined a new theory that helps to explain the stuff but at the same time makes it seem even more bizarre. According to the study, dark matter may have originated before the Big Bang.

The LIGO detector uses 4-km-long (2.5-mi) arms. But now, a Northwestern University team is aiming to build a gravitational wave detector small enough to fit on a tabletop, which could detect signals the larger facilities miss.

Physicists at Stanford and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have narrowed down the search for dark matter. Using observations of galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, the team found that dark matter is likely lighter than previously thought – and interacts even less with normal matter.

Dark matter is the mysterious substance that’s believed to permeate the universe, and the discovery last year of a galaxy with no dark matter was quite surprising. But now, astronomers have examined the oddball galaxy a bit closer – and found that it’s not so special after all.

Although the many experiments searching for evidence of dark matter have yet to turn up any solid proof yet, they are making other amazing discoveries. The XENON1T experiment has now revealed the longest half-life ever seen in an element, which is far, far longer than the age of the universe.

Although dark matter makes up roughly 85 percent of all matter, it’s still never been directly detected. Now researchers from the State University of New York at Albany have developed a new dark matter detector using supercooled water.

In a pair of studies published this week, astronomers have shed new light on dark matter through close observation of a galaxy previously found to have very little of the stuff, while the same team found a new example of a similar oddball galaxy.

Physicists have been hunting for dark matter for decades. Hypothetical particles called axions are a long-standing candidate, but a new experiment has now found that they don’t exist – at least within a certain mass range.