![]() ![]() One new kind of dark matter search would, for example, look for galaxies with distortions symptomatic of “fuzzy dark matter.” This theory considers dark matter particles as so incredibly lightweight that they act like waves instead of particles. A Fuzzier PossibilityĪs Earth-bound detectors fail, desperate physicists have begun looking to the sky for answers. ![]() These more ambitious, sometimes radical and farfetched, ideas, whether they succeed or not, at least attempt to reckon with the dire situation. ![]() Fortunately, the alarming reality that we’re on the wrong track has led some back the drawing board to seek out new avenues for discovery rather than retreading old ground. If astrophysicists don’t take big, new and different swings at dark matter, the search will only stagnate until it atrophies. But most such attempts simply tweak an existing theory or turn to battle-worn alternatives just to propose more of the same: huge experimental efforts to build the most sensitive instruments ever, only for them to look at nothing. So the failure to find this missing chunk of the universe-seen most recently in new results from the XENONnT experiment (in which I participated)-has sent physicists scrambling for an explanation. There should be five times as much dark matter around us as normal everyday matter, the stuff of stars, planets and people. But underground traps set on Earth to capture supposed dark particles have now spent years measuring nothing but subterranean silence. Decades ago, astrophysicists brimmed with hope of discovering dark matter, the unseen mass that lets galaxies spin far faster than their stars’ gravity would allow by itself. ![]()
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