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Slapnav: Looking for KINKY dark matter? Switch on the GPS!

Boffins use spare atomic clocks to check for errors

Although our ancestors would have been amazed by GPS technology for the current generation it's pretty old hat. Nevertheless, scientists have come up with a new idea for using the network of positioning satellites that encircle our globe – the quest to find dark matter.

In a paper published in the latest issue of Nature Physics, physicists Andrei Derevianko and Maxim Pospelov propose watching the satellites' atomic clocks for observable interactions with dark matter.

The two are working on the theory that dark matter is formed by kinks in the quantum fields of particles within the universe. These would cause changes in the mass of nearby electrons and even the progress of time itself – and that's where GPS comes in.

"Networks of correlated atomic clocks, some of them already in existence, such as the Global Positioning System, can be used as a powerful tool to search for topological defect dark matter, thus providing another important fundamental physics application for the ever-improving accuracy of atomic clocks," the paper reads.

"During the encounter with an extended dark-matter object, as it sweeps through the network, initially synchronized clocks will become desynchronized. Time discrepancies between spatially separated clocks are expected to exhibit a distinct signature, encoding the defect’s space structure and its interaction strength with atom."

Our Solar System circles that centre of the galaxy at around 483,000 miles per hour (773,000km/h), dragging the planets with it. Our GPS constellations span around 34,000 miles (nearly 55,000km) across, and the duo posit that at some point the satellites must have encountered dark matter, which would have caused a tiny change in the atomic clocks.

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They're sifting through the last 15 years of GPS satellite data to see if they can find such a shift. If that fails, they propose using a newly built network of Earth-based atomic clocks that form the Network for European Accurate Time and Frequency Transfer, which are even more accurate than those used by GPS.

There's one more card up the boffins' sleeve if the satellites strike out. Further afield, they say, the effects of dark matter might be found in the emissions of pulsars – neutron stars that rotate and send blasts of charged particles that can be detected on Earth.

"There's a tantalising hint from pulsar data," Derevianko told New Scientist. "These are like atomic clocks, highly regular."

Of course, it could be that they are totally wrong about this kinky dark matter business but that's what science is about – checking data to see if it fits an idea and then trying to test against it. So far that has worked pretty well for mankind. ®

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