Looking for a different sort of dark matter with GPS satellites

Science Focus

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The streaked lines, forming a circular path, are the result of strong gravitational lensing caused by dark matter. Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA, N. Benitez (JHU), T. Broadhurst (Racah Institute of Physics/The Hebrew University), H. Ford (JHU), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory), the ACS Science Team and ESA

We still don’t know what dark matter is. The most widely accepted possibility is Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs, and most dark matter searches are looking for those. But other possibilities remain, and these alternatives to WIMPs, the "monstrous creatures at the edges of the dark matter map," are still generally particles, theoretical, exotic, or otherwise. These particles could comprise the mysterious matter that holds the galaxies together and makes up 26.8 percent of the mass-energy of the Universe.

Yet there’s another possibility, a different sort of monstrous creature, one that doesn't involve particles. Some physicists have been exploring the idea that dark matter might be ‘topological defects’ in a quantum field. Rather than solid particles, these would be perturbations, or oscillations.

This week, two physicists proposed a way to look for such defects using only atomic clocks. Atomic clocks are “arguably the most accurate scientific instruments ever built,” the researchers write in their paper. And, crucially, the clocks necessary already exist in the form of our GPS system.

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