Gravitational wave scientists set their sights on dark matter

H. Lueck (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) - The technologies behind one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the century - the detection of gravitational waves - are now being used in the long-standing search for dark matter. Thought to make up roughly 85% of all matter in the Universe, dark matter has never been observed directly and remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in modern physics. With extremely sensitive detectors now at their disposal, already proven through several outstanding discoveries, scientists believe that existing gravitational wave technology has the true potential to finally discover the exotic material and even find out what it is made of. In a study published today in Nature, a team led by scientists from Cardiff University's Gravity Exploration Institute has taken the first step towards this goal by using the instruments, known as laser interferometers, to look for a new kind of dark matter for the very first time. Until recently, it was widely believed that dark matter was composed of heavy elementary particles. These were not discovered despite a multitude of efforts, and scientists are now turning to alternative theories to explain dark matter. A recent theory says that dark matter is actually something called a scalar field, which would behave as invisible waves bouncing around galaxies, including our own Milky Way.