A Minimalist Approach to the Hunt for Dark Matter
Specifically, the Antipas team used their experiments to search for a class of dark matter known as ultralight dark matter. At their heaviest, ultra-bright dark matter particles are still about a trillion times lighter than electrons. According to quantum mechanics, all matter has both particle-like and wave-like qualities, with larger objects typically having more particle-like qualities and smaller ones having more wave-like qualities. “When people talk about ultra-bright dark matter, they mean that dark matter is more like a wave,” said physicist Kathryn Zurek of the California Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the experiment. Like all other dark matter experiments so far, the Antipas search has found nothing. However, the absence of their discovery helps limit the properties of dark matter, as experiments show what dark matter is not. Also, the team’s approach differs from that of the more famous dark matter experiment, which looks for particles known as WIMPs (
