GPS already helps people navigate their way around unfamiliar places but Global Positioning System could also play a vital role in detecting and measuring the elusive dark matter.
Dark matter remains undetected but is postulated to exist in order to account for the gravitational effects of invisible mass. Of the dark energy that makes up about 68 percent of the universe, it is inferred that 27 percent is dark matter regardless that it is not visible and has not yet been directly detected and measured.
Two physicists have proposed a method to search for dark matter using GPS satellites and other networks of atomic clock and the process involves comparing times from the clocks and look for discrepancies.
Andrei Derevianko, from the University of Nevada, and Maxim Pospelov, from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, proposed that how dark matter is organized could be attributed to the kinks in the quantum field permeating the universe.
With this theory, the two researchers think that they can detect the elusive dark matter when it interacts with a network of highly sensitive atomic clocks. Since dark matter scarcely interacts with ordinary matter such as an atomic clock, any interaction could possibly result in time discrepancy and a distinct signature. They pointed out that while other things could also affect GPS time keeping, dark matter has its distinct signature.
"During the encounter with an extended dark-matter object, as it sweeps through the network, initially synchronized clocks will become desynchronized," the researchers wrote in their study published in the journal Nature on Nov. 17. "Time discrepancies between spatially separated clocks are expected to exhibit a distinct signature, encoding the defect's space structure and its interaction strength with atoms."
The two researchers have already started testing their ideas on detecting the elusive dark matter by analyzing clock data from 30 GPS satellites that use atomic clocks. Derevianko is working with Geoff Blewitt, from the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory, which developed and maintains the world's largest GPS data processing center that continuously processes information from about 12,000 stations worldwide.
"We propose to detect the defects, the dark matter, as they sweep through us with a network of sensitive atomic clocks," Derevianko said. "The idea is, where the clocks go out of synchronization, we would know that dark matter, the topological defect, has passed by. In fact, we envision using the GPS constellation as the largest human-built dark-matter detector."
