Physicists propose listening for dark matter with plasma-based “axion radio”

Enlarge / The Bullet Cluster is widely viewed as a clear demonstration of the existence of dark matter. (credit: APOD)

Dark matter is the mysterious substance that comprises about 23 percent of all the mass in our universe, but thus far it has eluded physicists' many attempts to directly detect it. Maybe instead of looking for a dark matter particle, they should be looking for something more akin to a wave-a hypothetical dark matter candidate known as an axion.

In that case, perhaps we should be "listening" for the dark matter. Physicists at Stockholm University and the Max Planck Institute of Physics have proposed a novel design for an "axion radio" that employs cold plasmas (gases or liquids of charged particles) to do just that in a recent paper in Physical Review Letters.

"Finding the axion is a bit like tuning a radio: you have to tune your antenna until you pick up the right frequency," said co-author Alexander Millar, a postdoc at Stockholm University. "Rather than music, experimentalists would be rewarded with 'hearing' the dark matter that the Earth is traveling through."

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