Scientists Discover New Technique to Detect Dark Matter

There may be a new method to detect dark matter. Physicists have taken a closer look at the current techniques and believe that they may just have a new way to detect elusive dark matter.

"We know that approximately five percent of the universe consists of the known matter we are all made of," said Chris Kouvaris, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This unknown matter is called dark matter, and we believe that it is all around us, including here on Earth."

Previously, physicists placed detectors in underground sites in order to detect dark matter. The general idea was that dark matter is easier to detect in these sites because there's less noise from cosmic or Earth-produced radiation that can potentially cover a signal from dark matter. Yet this approach relies on the idea that dark matter interacts only a bit with atoms as it goes underground.

"But we don't know if dark matter is that weakly interacting," said Kouvaris. "In principle dark matter particles can lose energy as they travel underground before they hit the detector due to interactions with regular atoms. And in that case they might not have enough energy left to trigger the detector once they arrive there."

In this case, the researchers propose that dark matter particles actually interact substantially with atoms. Depending on the properties of dark matter particles, deeply placed detects could be blind because particles have lost most of their energy before reaching the detector. In other words, it would make more sense to look for dark matter signals on the surface of the Earth or in shallow sites.

In fact, the researchers suggest that scientists look for a signal that varies periodically during the day rather than trying to detect a signal collision of a dark matter particle with a detector.

The findings could give researchers a new way to look for dark matter. This, in turn, could help with future research and studies.

The findings are published in the journal Physical Review D.