Someday this could be the first direct probe of dark matter using only gravity.
While it may seem logical to search for dark matter using gravity, no one has tried it in the nearly 40 years that scientists have been pursuing dark matter in the lab. That’s because gravity is, comparatively, a very weak force and difficult to isolate in experiments.
The Windchime Project collaboration has since grown to include 20 physicists. They have a prototype Windchime built of commercial accelerometers and are using it to develop the software and analysis that will lead to the final version of the detector, but it’s a far cry from the ultimate design. Carney estimates that it could take another few decades to develop sensors good enough to measure gravity even from heavy dark matter.
“There is a variety of very interesting dark matter candidates at [that scale] that are definitely worth looking for … including primordial black holes from the early universe,” says Katherine Freese, a physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who is not part of the Windchime collaboration. Black holes slowly evaporate, leaking mass back into space, she notes, which could leave many relics formed shortly after the Big Bang at the mass Windchime could detect.
Even if the experiment turns up nothing, Hooper says, “the amazing thing about [Windchime] … is that, independent of anything else you know about dark matter particles, they aren’t in this mass range.” With
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Planets made of dark matter may have blown up, and we could see themPaul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Paul received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011, and spent three years at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, followed by a research fellowship in Trieste, Italy, His research focuses on many diverse topics, from the emptiest regions of the universe to the earliest moments of the Big Bang to the hunt for the first stars. As an 'Agent to the Stars,' Paul has passionately engaged the public in science outreach for several years. He is the host of the popular 'Ask a Spaceman!' podcast, author of 'Your Place in the Universe' and 'How to Die in Space' and he frequently appears on TV — including on The Weather Channel, for which he serves as Official Space Specialist.
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