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Space Science

Elusive Dark Matter May Be Detected With GPS Satellites 67

Posted by Soulskill from the when-they're-not-busy-telling-you-how-far-you-are-from-a-starbucks dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Two researchers say time disparities identified through the network of satellites that make up our modern GPS infrastructure can help detect dark matter. In a paper in the online version of the scientific journal Nature Physics, they write that dark matter may be organized as a large gas-like collection of topological defects, or energy cracks. "We propose to detect the defects, the dark matter, as they sweep through us with a network of sensitive atomic clocks. The idea is, where the clocks go out of synchronization, we would know that dark matter, the topological defect, has passed by." Another reader adds this article about research into dark energy: The particles of the standard model, some type of dark matter and dark energy, and the four fundamental forces. That's all there is, right? But that might not be the case at all. Dark energy may not simply be the energy inherent to space itself, but rather a dynamical property that emerges from the Universe: a sort of fifth force. This is speculation that's been around for over a decade, but there hasn't been a way to test it until now. If this is the case, it may be accessible and testable by simply using presently existing vacuum chamber technology
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Elusive Dark Matter May Be Detected With GPS Satellites More

Elusive Dark Matter May Be Detected With GPS Satellites

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  • Satellites? Okay, here's one for you. The Voyager spacecraft. It traveled outside the solar system and the only minute unpredictable change in vector was due to heat radiating infrared photons from its metal. The measurements were THAT sensitive! And it interacted with exactly zero dark matter. You think some GPS satellite orbiting Earth is going to come up with different results?

    • The sensitivity in measuring one effect is no guarantee it will measure any other effect.
      As far as I know neither of the Voyagers is fitted with an atomic clock so this measurement method does not work on it.

      According to the article dark energy signatures would be evident in slight time shifts. Slight as in in the range of "billionth of a second". Light travels 30 cm (1 foot) in that time.
      According to the article GPS satellites can measure those. They just don't check if there is a pattern to them. That pat

      • Satellites orbiting earth with atomic clocks have been correcting for time dilation from moving at 24,000 MPH or whatever for decades. They all adapt with leap-milliseconds and if there was something in addition to dilation throwing them off, the anticipated corrections wouldn't be working. They are though.

        • A GPS satellite being off by half a millisecond would be horrible, about 150km off, so I can't really believe that leap-milliseconds would work.

    • You think some GPS satellite orbiting Earth is going to come up with different results?

      Ok, here's one for you - Voyager is a cheap ass grade school optical microscope. The GPS constellation is a scanning tunneling microscope. Which would you choose to look at atomic level features?

      Seriously, you're comparing apples to the thing least like apples that you can imagine. For starters they're looking at different effects, Voyager's effects manifested as variations in trajectory, while they're looking

  • collection topological defects, or energy cracks.

    This is not a good description. I've no idea what a topological defect or energy crack is.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • If you put two bar magnets next to each other, they tend to flip each other around so that they point in the same direction.

        Wow. Where I come from, if I put two bar magnets together they flip around until they point in the opposite direction, with N joining S. But then again, I'm Australian: things are different in the Northern Hemisphere.

      • You could still have some fun by flipping a few magnets, and watching the ripples spread as a wave throughout the universe

        There's got to be at least a novelty toy hidden in this idea.

    • This is not a good description. I've no idea what a topological defect or energy crack is.

      Fine. You haven't finished your dinner. Sit down and eat your vegetables, or 20 years from now you'll have high triglycerides and hate me for being a bad parent.

      Oh, wait,

      Explain it like I'm five

      Would you like some candy? I have candy. I'm not saying I would give you candy, but I do have candy.

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