Babbage: The hunt for dark matter

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The Economist

News, News & Politics

4.3 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dark matter is thought to make up around a quarter of the universe, but so far it has eluded detection by all scientific instruments. Scientists know it must exist because of the ways galaxies move and it also explains the large-scale structure of the modern universe. But no-one knows what dark matter actually is.

Scientists have been hunting for dark matter particles for decades, but have so far had no luck. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held recently in Denver, a new generation of researchers presented their latest tools, techniques and ideas to step up the search for this mysterious substance. Will they finally detect the undetectable?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Don Lincoln, senior scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; Christopher Karwin, a fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Josef Aschbacher, boss of the European Space Agency; Michael Murra of Columbia University; Jodi Cooley, executive director of SNOLAB; Deborah Pinna of University of Wisconsin and CERN.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this episode of Babbage is available to listen for free, but if you want to listen every week,
0:06.0	you'll need to become an economist subscriber. For full details, click the link in the show notes,
0:10.9	or search online for Economist podcasts. In a world of seismic change, will your business shape the future or be shaped by it?
0:22.6	How will we capture the imagination of tomorrow's consumers?
0:27.6	Overcome operational constraints to focus on future growth.
0:32.6	And unlock economic and social prosperity through environmental responsibility.
0:39.0	With EY's full spectrum of services across sectors, we're all in to shape the future with confidence.
0:45.4	Start your transformation journey at EY.com slash transformation. The Economist
0:57.4	There's a mystery in the sky.
1:08.8	Most of the universe is missing. The stuff that we're made of, and for
1:13.8	that matter everything else we can see on Earth and also the stars, only makes up around 5%
1:19.9	of the universe. Most of the universe, around 70%, is made of something called dark energy,
1:26.7	a substance that pushes space apart.
1:31.0	The rest, around 25%, is dark matter.
1:37.7	Dark matter doesn't emit light, so it's impossible to see.
1:41.7	But we know it has played an important role in the past 14 billion
1:45.3	years in bringing stars together to make galaxies. And it's also responsible for the large-scale
1:51.6	structure of the universe that we see today. Scientists want to know what this stuff is, because understanding it will be crucial in working out what the future size and shape of our universe will become.
2:08.6	But although scientists have searched for decades, so far they've found nothing.
2:15.6	However, a new generation of researchers with new instruments, techniques and new ideas, are stepping
2:25.3	up.
2:26.3	How do you find something that you can't see?
	...

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