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The Hunt for Ultralight Dark Matter


Perhaps dark matter is made of an entirely different kind of particle than the ones physicists have been searching for. New experiments are springing up to look for these ultra-lightweight phantoms.

They have the correct masses and interaction strengths to have formed abundantly during the Big Bang before annihilating each other at the right rate to become the leftover dark matter inferred in the universe today, a so-called thermal relic. For physicists, this “light dark matter” is akin to seeing a familiar face in a foreign land: The proposed particles exist in a range of masses similar to those of ordinary matter—electron- to proton-size. The origin story for ultralight dark matter particles depends on the particular theoretical model, but Toro says they would have arisen after the Big Bang, so the thermal-relic argument is irrelevant.

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