Promising evidence for the existence of a hypothetical dark matter particle has been uncovered in an experiment done by a team led by Vladan Vuletić at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, a related measurement by Michael Drewsen at Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues found no signs of the so-called “dark boson”.
Physicists know that the Standard Model of particle physics cannot be complete in its current form. For one thing, it does not describe dark matter – an elusive substance that has a profound influence on the evolution of galaxies and larger-scale structures in the universe. Current theoretical candidates for dark matter include hypothetical particles like axions and WIMPs – but decades-long attempts at the direct detection of such particles have come up short.
If dark matter particles behave in a broadly similar manner to known massive particles such as electrons, then interactions between dark matter particles should be mediated by a dark boson. In June 2020, physicists on the XENON dark matter detector observed excess light flashes in an underground liquid-xenon chamber, which may have been related to a dark boson.
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