Scientists may be just 15 years away from finally detecting dark matter thanks to a new kind of detector that acts like a “cosmic car radio.”
Designed to pick up the elusive frequency of axions — hypothetical particles thought to make up dark matter — this device could help unlock one of the universe’s greatest mysteries. With groundbreaking materials and technology already in place, researchers believe it’s now just a matter of scale, precision, and patience.
A Bold New Tool to Find Dark Matter
Scientists have developed a new type of detector — nicknamed a “cosmic radio” — that could help identify dark matter within the next 15 years.
In a study published on April 16 in Nature, researchers from King’s College London, Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and other institutions unveiled the foundation for what they believe could become the most precise dark matter detector yet.
Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that may account for up to 85% of the mass in the universe. While its existence is inferred from gravitational effects on stars and galaxies, its true nature remains unknown.
One of the leading candidates for dark matter is a hypothetical particle called the axion. These particles are thought to be extremely light and interact only weakly with normal matter, making them incredibly difficult to detect.
Tuning Into the Universe’s Hidden Frequencies
Axions are believed to behave like waves and could exist somewhere along the electromagnetic spectrum. However, scientists don’t yet know their exact frequency. Theories suggest axion frequencies could span a vast range — from the kilohertz range (audible to humans) to the far higher terahertz range.
The new study proposes a detector, likened to a cosmic car radio, designed to “tune in” to the axion’s frequency. The device uses a special material to generate what the researchers call an axion quasiparticle (AQ). If successful, it could allow scientists to detect axions — and potentially confirm the nature of dark matter — within the next decade and a half.
High-Tech Listening Post in Space
The AQ is designed so its frequency can be transmitted into space, a frequency that would match with the axion. When it identifies and ‘tunes in’ to that frequency, it will emit very small amounts of light. AQ operates at the highest terahertz frequencies, which many researchers believe to be the most promising place to look for axions.
Co-author Dr. David Marsh, Ernest Rutherford Fellow at King’s College London, said: “We can now build a dark matter detector that is essentially a cosmic car radio, tuning into the frequencies of the wider galaxy until we find the axion. We already have the technology, now it’s just a matter of scale and time.”
Building a Detector That Could Change Everything
The team believes that by creating a much larger piece of AQ material, they can create a functioning detector in five years. After that, they estimate it will take another decade of scanning the spectrum of high frequencies where dark matter is thought to be hiding before they find it.
To create the quasiparticles, the researchers used manganese bismuth telluride (MnBi2Te4), a material known for its unique electronic and magnetic properties. This was shaved down to just a few two-dimensional layers of material layered on top of one another.
Having developed the material over the past six years in the lab, Jian-Xiang Qiu, lead author from Harvard University said “Because MnBi₂Te₄ is so sensitive to air we needed to exfoliate it down to a few atomic layers to tune its properties accurately. This means we get to see this kind of interesting physics, and see how it interacts with other quantum entities like the axion.”
The Final Stretch in a 40-Year Hunt
Dr. Marsh added, “This is a really exciting time to be a dark matter researcher. There are as many papers being published now about axions as there were about the Higgs boson a year before it was found. Theorists proposed that axions acted like a radio frequency in 1983, and we now know we can tune in to it – we’re closing in on the axion and fast.”
Reference: “Observation of the axion quasiparticle in 2D MnBi2Te4” by Jian-Xiang Qiu, Barun Ghosh, Jan Schütte-Engel, Tiema Qian, Michael Smith, Yueh-Ting Yao, Junyeong Ahn, Yu-Fei Liu, Anyuan Gao, Christian Tzschaschel, Houchen Li, Ioannis Petrides, Damien Bérubé, Thao Dinh, Tianye Huang, Olivia Liebman, Emily M. Been, Joanna M. Blawat, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Kin Chung Fong, Hsin Lin, Peter P. Orth, Prineha Narang, Claudia Felser, Tay-Rong Chang, Ross McDonald, Robert J. McQueeney, Arun Bansil, Ivar Martin, Ni Ni, Qiong Ma, David J. E. Marsh, Ashvin Vishwanath and Su-Yang Xu, 16 April 2025, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08862-x
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9 Comments
Why now?
Why is it now that we introduce the issue with Dark Matter?
Dark matter is the scientific equivalent of believing in god. There’s no evidence for it whatsoever, but some believe in it nonetheless. #smh
Ya, and them atoms can go to. No evidence, nada, zilch.
yes, there is ample evidence for dark matter….it is observed in the distribution of matter as observed in a epoch scale…something has altered their form utilizing known laws of physics which means essentially another dimension…when we are able to tune in to that wavelength, we’ll see it.
‘Having developed the material over the past six years in the lab, Jian-Xiang Qiu, lead author from Harvard University said “Because MnBi₂Te₄ is so sensitive to air we needed to exfoliate it down to a few atomic layers to tune its properties accurately. …” ‘
Exfoliation has nothing to do with the compound’s sensitivity to air; the material was exfoliated in a v a c u u m* ; that fixed the sensitivity wagon. The procedure would have pertained for tuning reasons, yes, whether it was air-sensitive or not.
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*”Methods
1. Bulk crystal growth and 2D sample fabrication” –Paper
I still say it’s Pretendium. Willing to be proven wrong, tho’.
I think it is overly optimistic to put a timeline on the discovery of something that is questionable if it even exists and might simply be a proxy for something we don’t understand. Essential to the ‘discovery’ is building a device that doesn’t yet exist, that may be capable of measuring a poorly characterized hypothetical particle that may not exist.
Why is it that the standing joke is that controlled thermonuclear fusion, when first proposed, was considered to be 40-years in the future — and 40 -years later is still considered to be 40-years in the future — yet these theorists are confident that they can prove the existence of something that not everyone agrees even exists, within the next 15-years? Hubris!
In the 1800’s , scientists believed in and searched for the “aether’ . That went on for decades until Einstein proved the aether did not exist. Dark Matter is an aether–can’t be seen, touched and supposedly only affects by gravity– decades of looking that is becoming more science career than discovery. So, if someone funds the proposed detector and waits 15 years, that will partially eliminate one theory of Dark Matter–until the request for a bigger detector.