Physicists say that dark matter can be found right on Earth — and an ordinary antenna will help.

Dark matter, which is believed to make up the majority of our Universe, remains elusive as it manifests solely through gravitational effects on visible matter. From time to time, researchers propose various interesting theoretical methods for its detection, and one of the recent ones suggests that this can be done right on Earth, more precisely—in its ionosphereThe ionosphere is layers of the atmosphere at altitudes from 80 to 600 km, characterized by a high content of ions and free electrons. Ionization occurs under the influence of ultraviolet rays of solar radiation..

The theoretical model proposed by a team of researchers from the University of Geneva, CERN, and the University of Rome La Sapienza, suggests that all dark matter (or a large part of it) may consist of axions or dark photons, which transform into ordinary photons on Earth—and this transformation can ultimately be tracked using antennas.

Previously, scientists had considered the possibility of resonant conversion of dark matter into ordinary photons in astrophysical environments (in the solar corona, neutron stars, on Jupiter, etc.), yet the ionosphere has long avoided this participation, despite being well-studied and convenient for tracking.

Researchers calculated the conversion coefficient for the signal they predicted, taking into account various effects that could weaken it, and compared this signal with background noise (i.e., unrelated photons), which could reach a potential antenna, to evaluate the potential of their approach for detecting dark matter axions or dark photons in a real experiment.

The findings indicate that a small dipole antenna would be sufficient to capture the predicted signal, but of course, this can only be confirmed experimentally. Meanwhile, the method is quite inexpensive compared to those proposed earlier, so it is entirely possible that we will see results in the coming years.

Beadle and his team are currently working with other experimental physicists to plan future searches for dark matter based on their own predictions.

Source: phys.org