IT^S ME. AND I AM WHO?

I AM NATURE

AND WHO ARE YOU

IF I AM LIVE

YOU ALSO.

WHAT IS YOUR EGO?

KEEP ME CLEAN
FOR UPCOMING YOUR OWN GENERATION.

The idea is pretty exciting, says Dan Hooper, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. “Although there are many details yet to be demonstrated before this kind of programme could be realistically implemented, I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t succeed, at least in principle.”

But others, such as physicist Juan Collar of the University of Chicago in Illinois, strike a more cautionary note. In the mid-1990s, physicists considered using the mineral mica as a target for similar searches for dark matter2. But Collar subsequently showed3 that radioactivity from uranium in the minerals would create tracks in the mica that would be impossible to distinguish from those created by WIMPs. He fears a similar fate would befall Freese’s proposal.

“This issue is not limited to mica, but instead affects any mineral containing the ubiquitous natural abundance of uranium and thorium,” he says. “They may be able to find minerals where this problem is reduced, but I think that right now their claims are way too optimistic.”

Freese acknowledges that uranium is a concern, although it's unclear whether the minerals that she and her team propose contain uranium or thorium contaminants. But she adds that it might be possible to identify specific etching patterns that can be created only by a burst of radioactivity, and to ignore them. “The truth is you have to do it and find out,” she says.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05660-6
Nature Briefing
Sign up for the daily Nature Briefing email newsletter

Stay up to date with what matters in science and why, handpicked from Nature and other publications worldwide.

SIGN UP

References

Baum, S. Drukier, A. K., Freese, K., Górski, M. & Stengel, P. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05991 (2018).

Snowden-Ifft, E. P., Freeman, E. S. & Price, P. B. Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4133 (1995).

Article Google Scholar

Collar, J. I. Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 331 (1996).

Article Google Scholar
Download references

RELATED ARTICLES
Dark-matter hunt fails to find the elusive particles
Physics: Broaden the search for dark matter
Mysterious galactic signal points LHC to dark matter
SUBJECTS
Astronomy and astrophysics Particle physics Physics