‘Cosmic radio’ detector could uncover dark matter within 15 years, scientists say

Jack Loughran Wed 16 Apr 2025

Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/04/16/cosmic-radio-detector-could-uncover-dark-matter-within-15-years-scientists-say

A ‘cosmic radio’ detector that could potentially discover dark matter in 15 years has been developed by a team of researchers.

Dark matter is widely accepted to be a real phenomenon due to gravitational effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters that provide strong evidence for its presence. It is thought that it could account for around 85% of mass in the universe.

However, it has never been directly detected before because it does not interact with electromagnetic radiation, meaning it neither absorbs, reflects nor emits light, making it invisible.

Scientists at King’s College London, Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and others have shared the foundation of what they believe will be the most accurate dark matter detector to date. 

Axions are one of the leading candidates for dark matter. These are tiny, weakly interacting particles that could exist in the universe – responsible for gravitational effects in space that cannot yet be explained.

Axions are thought to have a frequency like a wave, but scientists do not know where they exist on the electromagnetic spectrum. They are thought to range from kilohertz, a frequency that can be heard by humans, to the very high terahertz frequency. 

In the latest study, researchers explain how a detector known as axion quasiparticle (AQ) could help discover dark matter in 15 years. 

The AQ is designed so its frequency can be transmitted into space – a frequency that would match with the axion. When it identifies and ‘tunes in’ to that frequency, it will emit very small amounts of light. AQ operates at the highest terahertz frequencies, which many researchers believe to be the most promising place to look for axions.

Co-author Dr David Marsh, Ernest Rutherford Fellow at King’s College London, said: “We can now build a dark matter detector that is essentially a cosmic car radio, tuning into the frequencies of the wider galaxy until we find the axion. We already have the technology – now it’s just a matter of scale and time.” 

The team believe by creating a much larger piece of AQ material, they can create a functioning detector in five years. After that, they estimate it will take another decade of scanning the spectrum of high frequencies where dark matter is thought to be hiding before they find it. 

The material was developed over the past six years in the lab from manganese bismuth telluride (MnBi₂Te₄), a material known for its unique electronic and magnetic properties.

Jian-Xiang Qiu, lead author of the study from Harvard University, said: “Because MnBi₂Te₄ is so sensitive to air, we needed to exfoliate it down to a few atomic layers to tune its properties accurately. This means we get to see this kind of interesting physics, and see how it interacts with other quantum entities like the axion.”