Could “quasiparticles” reveal dark matter?

3-D impression of dark matter via Hubble

Dark matter is thought to make up 80% of the mass of our universe but current physics has no clue what it is:

These dark matter particles are streaming through your room right now. They’re streaming through you. A never-ending rain shower of tiny, invisible dark matter particles. But you simply don’t notice them. They don’t interact with light or with charged particles. You are made of charged particles and you are very friendly with light; you are invisible to dark matter and dark matter is invisible to you. The only way we “see” dark matter is through the gravitational force; gravity notices every form of matter and energy in the universe, dark or not, so at the largest scales, we observe the influence of the combined mass of all these countless particles. But here in your room? Nothing.

Paul Sutter, “These Odd ‘Quasiparticles’ Could Finally Unmask Dark Matter” at Space.com

One group of physicists proposes an experiment to try to trick dark matter into revealing itself, involving a unit of energy called a “magnon”:

In a recent article published in the preprint online journal arXiv, physicists detail a proposed experimental setup that could spot a dark matter particle in the act of changing the spin of electrons (if, in fact, dark matter can do that). In this setup, dark matter can potentially be detected, even if the suspect particle is very light. It can do this by creating so-called magnons in the material.

Paul Sutter, “These Odd ‘Quasiparticles’ Could Finally Unmask Dark Matter” at Space.com

Here’s the paper.

See also: Discover: Even the best dark matter theories are crumbling

Researcher: The search for dark matter has become a “quagmire of confirmation bias” So many research areas in science today are hitting hard barriers that it is reasonable to think that we are missing something.

Physicists devise test to find out if dark matter really exists

Largest particle detector draws a blank on dark matter

What if dark matter just doesn’t stick to the rules?

A proposed dark matter solution makes gravity an illusion

and

Proposed dark matter solution: “Gravity is not a fundamental governance of our universe, but a reaction to the makeup of a given environment.”

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