New model to detect dark matter

​London: Researchers have presented a new model for what dark matter might be, a discovery that can lead scientists to invisible dark matter that is all around us yet no one has ever seen it and no one knows what it really is.

Physical calculations state that approximately 27 per cent of the universe is dark matter. Only five percent is the matter of which all known materials consist: from the smallest ant to the largest galaxy.

For decades, researchers have tried to detect this invisible dark matter. “Maybe it's because we have looked after dark particles in a way that will never be able to reveal them. Maybe dark matter is of a different character and needs to be looked for in a different way,” explained Martin Sloth, associate professor at University of Southern Denmark.

For decades, physicists have been working on the theory that dark matter is light and therefore interact weakly with ordinary matter.This means that the particles are capable of being produced in colliders.

This theory's dark particles are called weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and they are theorised to have been created in an inconceivably large number shortly after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

The team aims to measure the polarisation of the cosmic background radiation, either from the ground or with instruments sent up in a balloon or satellite to avoid atmospheric disturbances.