Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

UNR professor thinks GPS may be the key to finding dark matter

Andrei Derevianko

UNR

UNR professor Andrei Derevianko.

We’ve all had to rely on GPS to find our way at some point.

But a pair of scientists doing work in Northern Nevada and Canada — who often feel lost in the mysterious world of quantum physics — say GPS may soon offer insight into understanding something much more complicated than how to get across town: dark matter, that mysterious invisible stuff of science fiction that makes up a great portion of the universe.

Andrei Derevianko, of the University of Nevada, Reno, and Maxim Pospelov, of the University of Victoria, say they’ve come up with a way to search for dark matter using GPS satellites and atomic clock networks.

Because dark matter is invisible, it does not reflect light. That’s why it’s called “dark.” Its composition has made dark matter elusive, unmeasurable by modern instruments.

But Derevianko and Pospelov say their method may change that.

Their idea is built on the premise that dark matter might be organized as a large, gas-like collection of “energy cracks,” or kinks in the fabric of space.

The scientists think they can detect those kinks as they interact with a network of sensitive atomic clocks.

It’s within those kinks, Derevianko said, that dark matter can alter how time is measured. Dark matter rarely comes in contact with ordinary matter, like an atomic clock, meaning it's possible any interaction could result in a change.

Properties we consider constant — such as time and mass — could be impacted by a run-in with dark matter, meaning the time logged in an atomic clock moving through a galactic wind of dark matter might measure differently.

As the Earth moves through these cracks in space as it barrels through the cosmos, dark matter blows through its orbiting satellites. And as the dark matter blows by the satellites, it could theoretically cause the clocks of GPS systems to go out of sync.

“The idea is, where the clocks go out of synchronization, we would know that dark matter, the topological defect, has passed by,” said Derevianko, a professor of quantum physics, in a statement. “In fact, we envision using the GPS constellation as the largest human-built dark-matter detector.”

Derevianko, a Russian native, says dark matter represents a big problem in science. Research has shown dark energy — the force that’s continuously expanding space — makes up about 68 percent of the portion of the universe scientists know virtually nothing about. Dark matter makes up the other 27 percent.

“Dark matter is a big crisis in science. We only know what makes up 5 percent of the universe,” Derevianko said. “It’s a huge mystery.”

Going forward, Derevianko will collaborate with Geoff Blewitt, director of the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory, to analyze mass amounts of GPS data. Th lab holds the largest GPS data processing center in the world and processes information from 12,000 stations around the globe 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The duo’s research and idea appeared today in the scientific journal Nature Physics.

Other scientists seems intrigued by the idea.

“This type of work can be transformative in science and could completely change how we think about our universe,” Jeff Thompson, a physicist and dean of the University’s College of Science, said in a statement. “Andrei is a world-class physicist and he has already made seminal contributions to physics. It’s a wonder to watch the amazing work that comes from him and his group.”

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