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How Do Scientists Hunt for Dark Matter? A Physicist Explains Why the Mysterious Substance Is So Hard to Find
Dark matter doesn’t seem to interact with the matter we can see and touch, so scientists look for it in unusual places, like faraway galaxies and underground detectors.
By David Joffe, Associate Professor of Physics, Kennesaw State University
That’s a great question. It’s one of the most difficult and fascinating problems right now in both astronomy and physics, because while scientists know that the elusive substance called dark matter makes up the majority of all matter in the universe, we’ve never actually observed it directly. Dark matter is so difficult to interact with because it’s “dark,” which means it doesn’t interact directly with light in any way.
I’m a physicist, and scientists like me observe the world around us mainly by looking for signals from different wavelengths of light. So no matter what type of technology scientists use, they run into the same issue in the hunt for dark matter.
It’s not completely impossible to interact with dark matter, though, because it can interact with ordinary matter in other ways that don’t involve light. But those interactions are…
