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Dark Photons: Hidden Signals from Earth · The Quark Side - Quantum Physics Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the quart Side Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and understanding begins the smallest scales.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I want you to take a second and just like,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: imagine something for me. Think about the ground beneath your
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: feet right now, the actual planet you're standing on, right.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Because we usually just think of Earth as a giant
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: rock floating through the void of space, just a.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Habitat yeah, exactly, a place with oceans and mountains and
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: well us. But I really want you to look at
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: it differently today. Imagine that this planet isn't just a rock.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, imagine that it's actually this massive, incredibly sensitive
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: scientific instrument.
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, a planetary scale machine just like humming with energy.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: And after decades of staring out into the dark, scientists
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: have finally figured out how to turn it on.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: It completely alters our perspective on how we do science. Really.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're so used to the idea of building
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: these massive machines to study the universe, right like.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Those giant metal tubes underground.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Or cooling superconducting magnets down to absolute zero. Yeah, we
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: try to isolate everything in these pristine, highly artificial lab environments.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: But what we're looking at today it just flips traditional
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: laboratory science entirely on its head.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Because the machine we needed to understand the cosmos was, well,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: it was already built.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Exactly, we're living on it, and.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: We need a machine this big. I mean a machine
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: literally the size of a planet, because the mystery we're
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: trying to solve is arguably, anyway the biggest mystery in
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: the entire universe, the hunt for dark matter. Right, we're
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: going to explore this brilliant, very recent breakthrough in physics
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: where researchers are actually using the Earth's own magnetic field
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: to track down two mind bogglingly tiny hypothetical.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Particles ultra light axions and dark photons.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, which is just like an incredibly ambitious undertaking using
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the Earth itself to find the invisible backbone of the cosmos.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: It perfectly illustrates how sometimes you know, when you hit
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: a wall in experimental physics, the answer isn't to just
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: look closer or build a more expensive laboratory.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Right, You don't just throw more money at it, Exactly.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Sometimes the answer is to step back, look at the
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: biggest picture possible, and actually use the natural physics of
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: the world to your advantage.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this, because before we can really appreciate
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: how you'd even use an entire planet as a dark
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: matter detector, we have to understand the sheer scale of
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: the problem we're up against, right we do.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: We need to set the stage with the core dark
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: matter problem itself.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: So what are we actually looking for and why has
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: it been so like impossible to find?
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Well, when astronomers look at the universe, they observe how
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: galaxies spin and how light bends around massive galaxy clusters. Yeah,
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: and simply put, the math just doesn't add up based
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: on the stuff we can actually.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: See, right, the normal matter, Yeah.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: The stars, the planets, the gas clouds, you and me.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: It all only accounts for this tiny, tiny fraction of
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: what's actually out there.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: It's like the classic spinning plate problem, right, Like, if
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: you spin a plate with say, pennies on it too fast,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: the pennies.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Just fly off right centrifugal force.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and galaxies are spinning so fast that the stars
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: should literally be flung out into deep space, but they aren't.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: They hold together. Yeah, and the current consensus is that
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: there is this invisible glue holding it all together, dark matter.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Which makes up what roughly twenty five percent of the
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: universe's total energy content.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Roughly, Yeah, it has this massive, undeniable gravitational footprint. I mean,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: it's existence is almost certain based on those gravitational effects alone.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Yet we have no idea what it actually is.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: It's true identity has completely eluded scientists for nearly a
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: century now.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like watching a cuppet show, you know,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: where you can see the wooden puppets dancing perfectly in
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: sync doing these incredibly complex routines, but the strings are
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: completely invisible.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: We know the strings are pulling the puppets, but we
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: can't catch them. We can't touch them, which brings us
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: to our prime suspects. I guess if dark matter isn't
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: made of normal atoms, what is it?
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  Speaker 3: Well, the two leading candidates right now are those hypothetical
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  Speaker 3: particles we mentioned earlier, ultralight axions and dark photons.
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  Speaker 2: Right, And we really need to emphasize the word ultralight here,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: don't we.
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  Speaker 3: We absolutely do. When physicists talk about these specific particles
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: in this particular range. Their mass is almost incomprehensible to
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  Speaker 3: the human mind.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Because they're estimated to be what nineteen to twenty one
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  Speaker 2: orders of magnitude lighter than an electron.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly, nineteen to twenty one orders of magnitude.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: See numbers like that, just they just slide right off
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: the brain. I mean, an electron is already a fundamental
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: building block so smart we can barely fathom it in
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: our daily lives.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Right, and we are talking about something that is a
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: billion trillion times lighter than that.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: It's practically nothing, So how do you even begin to
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: look for something that infinitely small?
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  Speaker 3: Traditionally, the method for hunting axions relies on strong magnetism.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: The prevailing theory suggests that if an axion passes through
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: a sufficiently intense magnetic.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Field, it does something weird, right, Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: It has a very small probability of spontaneously converting into
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: a photon.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, So it literally turns into light exactly, you
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: would turn into a tiny flash of light that our
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: sensors could actually detect.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: So conventional searches build these highly controlled experiments where they
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: fire up incredibly strong superconducting magnets inside a laboratory.
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  Speaker 2: Just hoping that an axion flies through the room, hits
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: the field, and pops out as a detectable photon.
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  Speaker 3: That's the idea. Yeah, but this is where the traditional
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: method hits a massive physical bottleneck.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, think about it. Logically, we're looking for something
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  Speaker 2: twenty orders of magnetude lighter than an electron. Trying to
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: find these particles using a standard lab magnet, It's like
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: trying to catch a microscopic, completely invisible ghost, right right.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: And you're using like a standard butterfly net, but you're
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: swinging it while standing inside a dark, cramped closet.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: That is a perfect way to visualize the limitation.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, you might have a really really nice, incredibly
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: expensive butterfly net, but the area you're swinging it in
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: is just way too small.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Because it's not just about the absolute strength of
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: the magnet you're powering up. It is about the volume,
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: the sheer amount of fifical three dimensional space that your
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: magnetic field can cover. Right, real estate, Exactly, a laboratory magnet,
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: no matter how powerful human engineering can make it, is
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: inherently limited by the walls of the room.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: It sits in which just isn't big enough, not even close.
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  Speaker 3: When the particles you're hunting are this infinitesimally small and
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: their interactions are so staggeringly rare, volume becomes your most
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: critical asset. Need a much much larger net to have
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: any statistical hope of catching one.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, So, if the problem with lab magnets is purely
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: a lack of real estate, the obvious solution is to
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: find a bigger room. But I mean, where do you
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: find a magnet bigger than a building?
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: Well, you step outside, right. This is the brilliance of
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: a recent collaborative effort by researchers from Kyoto University, Hiroshima University,
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  Speaker 3: and Nihi University. They realize that Earth's own natural magnetic
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  Speaker 3: field spans a scale that no human made laboratory could
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  Speaker 3: ever possibly.
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  Speaker 2: Match, because our planet is quite literally a giant magnet
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  Speaker 2: spinning through a hypothetical ocean of dark matter.
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  Speaker 3: Precisely, why build a magnet when you can just live
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: on one?
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  Speaker 2: It completely redefines our tool set, doesn't it.
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  Speaker 3: It really does. At Sushi Turiya, who is one of
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: the key figures driving this research, pointed out this beautifully
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  Speaker 3: elegant mechanism that our planet naturally provides. He noted that
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: the earth ionosphere cavity acts as a natural resonator.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let me stop you there. So what does this
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: all mean? The Earth ionosphere cavity. I'm like trying to
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: picture this in my head. Is it sort of like
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: the body of an acoustic guitar?
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's an interesting way to think about it.
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  Speaker 2: How so, Well, if you just take a guitar string,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: pull it tight in the open air, and pluck it,
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  Speaker 2: it hardly makes any sound at all.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Right, right, it's very quiet.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: The string vibrates, sure, but it's the hollow, wooden cavity
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: of the guitar's body catching those vibrations, bouncing them around
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  Speaker 2: and actually amplifying the sound so we can hear it.
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  Speaker 2: Is the Earth doing something like that?
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  Speaker 3: What's fascinating here is that your acoustic guitar analogy is
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  Speaker 3: physically exactly what is happening, just with electromagnetism instead of
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: acoustic sound.
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  Speaker 2: Wow, okay, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: To visualize the cavity, imagine the solid surface of the Earth. Now,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: look up high up in our atmosphere. There's a layer
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  Speaker 3: called the ionosphere.
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  Speaker 2: Right where the air gets really thin.
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  Speaker 3: It's actually a shell of atmosphereic gas that has been
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: baked by solar radiation until his particles become electrically charged.
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  Speaker 3: The space between the solid ground and that charged onosphere
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  Speaker 3: is a massive spherical gap.
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  Speaker 2: And that gap is the hollow body of our planetary guitar.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, when electromagnetic waves, like the tiny tiny ones
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: that would be produced by an axion or a dark
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  Speaker 3: photon interacting with Earth's magnetic field, when they bounce around
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  Speaker 3: inside this massive spherical gap, the planetary cavity naturally amplifies them.
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  Speaker 3: That is wild, and it just so happens that this
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: planetary guitar body naturally amplifies electromagnetic waves right around the
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  Speaker 3: specific mass range of the ultra light axions and dark photons.
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  Speaker 3: The team wanted to probe.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, but I mean, the acoustic guitar analogy is beautiful
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: in theory, but detecting dark matter can't be as simple
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: as just holding a really big microphone up to the sky.
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  Speaker 2: There had to be a catch. The math wasn't quite.
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  Speaker 3: There yet, right, No, it wasn't. It was a significant
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  Speaker 3: theoretical roadblock for a long time before this team's work.
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  Speaker 3: The existing mathematical models used to understand this cavity could
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: only accurately handle frequencies below one.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Hurtz so cycle per second, which.
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  Speaker 3: Means if the dark matter signal is coming in higher
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  Speaker 3: than one hurts, the old math basically renders us completely
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  Speaker 3: deaf to it. So how do you fix a math
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  Speaker 3: model that just goes blind at higher frequencies?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: You have to rethink the fundamental assumptions of your model.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: The breakthrough came when the research team built an entirely
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: new theoretical framework that accounted for the electrical conductivity of
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: the Earth's lower atmosphere.
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  Speaker 3: Wait, I thought the lower atmosphere was just like regular air.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Well, Previously models treated the air in the cavity almost
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: like a perfect vacuum. But the atmosphere isn't entirely empty.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: It has a slight electrical charge, a very faint conductivity, and.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: I'm guessing that charge messes with the signal exactly.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: It creates a drag as an electromagnetic wave pushes through
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: the atmosphere, that slight conductivity pulls on it, altering how
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: it behaves. If your math ignores that drag, your predictions
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: completely fall apart.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: At higher frequencies, so they factored the drag in.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, by factoring in how the atmosphere itself conducts electricity,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: they were finally able to extend these reliable predictions all
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: the way up to about thirty hertz, which is the
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: key that unlocks the whole planetary machine, because by expanding
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: the math up to thirty hertz, they found the sweet spot,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: didn't they?
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: They did. This new framework specifically showed that the earth
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: dionosphere cavity acts as a massive amplifier for signals right
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: near eight herts.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: They finally had the mathematical blueprint to understand what the
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: planet's resonance should actually look like if dark matter was
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: interacting with it.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, so the team has the math, they've effectively tuned
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: their theoretical instruments to listen to the Earth's cavity. But
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: a theoretical framework is still just you know, chalk on
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: a blackboard until you test it against the real world.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Right. You need actual data?
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they needed planetary data to actually hunt for these suspects.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Where do you even get that kind of data?
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: You need a very specific, highly pristine data set. You
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: can't just take a quick snapshot. You need a long,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: continuous recording of the Earth's magnetic feel to search for
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: an incredibly faint, steady hum.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: So where did they look?
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: The utilized data from the British Geological Surveys Eskdale Mure Observatory.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: It's this very quiet station in Scotland, far away from
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: major city interference, and they analyzed a massive decade long
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: data set spanning from twenty twelve to twenty.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Twenty two, ten years of continuous planetary data. I cannot
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: even fathom the sheer volume of noise in a data
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: set like that.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's intense. Think about the monumental task of sifting
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: through ten years of the Earth's electromagnetic history second by second.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: The Earth's magnetic field is incredibly chaotic.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you have solar storms blasting the upper atmosphere.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: We have global lightning strikes constantly going on.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: We had artificial noise right like power grids and subway.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Systems exactly all of these things create massive electromagnetic spikes.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: The team had to meticulously clean the data set, applying
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: rigorous mathematical filters to scrub away all of that artificial
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: and natural noise.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Because what they were looking for. Wasn't a sudden spike, right,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: it was a whisper. They were hunting for this steady,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: narrow frequency signal, something that just hums constantly over incredibly
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: long time scales, which is the exact footprint a background
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: field of dark matter would leave.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: And here's where the detective work gets really sophisticated, because
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: they aren't just looking for one suspect, They are hunting
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: for two distinct particles, axions and dark photons.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Oh right, both of them.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: And their new theoretical framework actually provided a way to
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: tell the difference between the two based on where the
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: signal appeared on the planet.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, I definitely want to hear how they tell them apart,
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: it all.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Comes down to geographic variation. The framework predicted that if
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: the signal was originating from axions, it wouldn't look the
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: same everywhere on Earth. Why not, because the strength of
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: an axion signal depends on the specific geometry and angle
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: of Earth's magnetic field as the planet moves through the
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: dark matter background. Because of this geometry, the math pointed
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: to southeast Age as the specific location where axion signals
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: would be the absolute strongest.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: So axions have like a geographic hot.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: Spot, they have a geographic footprint. Yes. Dark photons, however,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: are a completely different story.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Wait a second, let me push back on this logically
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: for a minute. The whole premise of this planetary detector
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: is that we are using the Earth's magnetic field to
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: trigger these particles. Correct, But the physics of dark photons
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: states that they generate electromagnetic waves on their own, even
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: without a magnetic field present, right, that's right. So if
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: a dark photon doesn't even need the magnetic field to
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: make its wave, why are we bothering to use this
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: geomagnetic data set to look for them.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: That hits the absolute core of the issue, and it
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: highlights a really subtle but vital distinction in the physics here.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: You are entirely correct that dark photons do not need
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: a magnetic field to generate an electromagnetic wave. They do
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: that intrinsically. But and this is the critical distinction, that
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: initial way generated by a dark photon is un fathomably weak.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: If that wave just happened out in the vacuum of
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: space or even in our atmosphere without an amplifier, we
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: would never detect it. Our sensors just aren't sensitive enough. Oh,
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: I see, we desperately need the earth ionosphere cavity to
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: act as our resonator.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: So it all goes back to the acoustic guitar.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: It does. The dark photon might be plucking its own string,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: completely ignoring the Earth's magnetic field, but we still need
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: the massive resonant hollow body of the planetary cavity to
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: catch that tiny vibration.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: To bounce it around and actually amplify it into a
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: signal we can read.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Exactly at places like the s dale Mere Observatory. And
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: because dark photons do not rely on the specific geometry
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: of the magnetic field to create their wave, the framework
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: predicted their signal should look nearly identical everywhere on.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Earth without a hotspot in Southeast Asia. Precisely, that makes
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: perfect sense. The planet is still the amplifier, even if
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: the particle brought its own guitar string. Okay, So if
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: they apply this decade of meticulously cleaned up data from
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the Scottish observatory to their brand new thirty hertz mathematical framework,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: what did they actually find? Did the planetary machine work?
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: The results they achieved didn't just prove the concept works,
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: It completely blew the doors off the previous limits of
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: dark matter research by treating the entire planet as a detector.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: The constraints this team set on how strongly axions couple
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: to light are now roughly one hundred times tighter than
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: the previous best limits from any ground based laboratory experiment.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Hold on, before we celebrate that, define couple to light
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: for me, what does that actually mean in plain English?
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: Sure, think of coupling as a probability rate. It is
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: simply a measurement of how likely it is that an
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: axion will actually transform into a photon, a particle of
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: light when it hits a magnetic field.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, I follow you.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: So by setting tighter limits, the researchers are basically saying
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: we have narrowed down the hiding spots. If axions exist,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: their probability of interacting with light must be lower than
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: this new threshold, because if it was higher, our planetary
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: contector definitely would have seen them.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Ah. So they drew a much smaller, much more precise
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: boundary box for where these particles can hide, and they
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: did it by a factor of one hundred. That is
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a massive leap in precision.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: It is astronomical. In fact, these new limits derived from
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: essentially looking at the ground. They're so good that they
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: rival the constraints set by major multi billion dollar astrophysical
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: space observatories like Chandra and NuStar.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: I just need to pause and marvel at that for
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: a second. Right, we're talking about launching multi billion dollar
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: rockets into space, putting X ray observatories in orbit to
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: stare into the deep cosmos yea. And this team rivaled
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: that precision by downloading public geological data from a quiet
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: sheep field in Scotland and just applying better math to it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: That is the ultimate scientific flex.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: It really is. And it's worth noting that those space
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: observatories rely on a whole different set of theoretical assumptions
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: about extream chaotic environments deep in space. This terrestrial approach
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: cuts through a lot of that cosmic uncertainty. Wow, but
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: their analysis didn't stop at just setting limits and ruling
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: things out.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, this raises an important question about what we're actually
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: seeing in the data, because mysteriously, when they ran the
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: analysis looking for dark photons, they didn't just draw a blank.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Wait, they actually found something.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: They turned up several signal candidates real distinct signals in
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: the data that match their frequency profile of what could
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: potentially originate from dark matter.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: They found breadcrumbs. Now to be absolutely clear for everyone listening,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: their true nature is unconfirmed. Right. We are not saying
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: this team definitively discovered dark matter today.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: No, no, we're not saying that.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: But the signatures are there, sitting right in that narrow
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: frequency ban behaving the exact way a dark photon is
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: theoretically supposed to behave when amplified by the Earth. I mean,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: it's the exact type of anomaly you would hope to
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: see if we are finally looking in the right place exactly.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: This is why this research, which was published in the
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, is being viewed as
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: the foundation for a completely.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: New era, a whole new way of doing things.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: It's expected to underpin a new phase of dark matter searches.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: They've built the mathematical framework, they have proven the Earth
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: works as a reliable amplifier, and they've already found anomalies
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: that demand immediate for their investigation.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: It really is a triumph of thinking outside the box,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: or I guess outside the laboratory.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: If we connect this to the bigger picture. For you
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: listening right now, it profoundly changes how you should perceive
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: your immediate environment. How so well the device you're listening
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: to this on, the room, you're sitting in the air,
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: you are breathing. It is all currently bathing in this
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: continuous planetary resonance. We are constantly enveloped by the earth
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: onosphere cavity, humming and vibrating with invisible electromagnetic waves.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: It completely changes our relationship with the planet, doesn't it.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: It's not just our home or our ecosystem. It's a
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: highly tuned lens that we can use to view the deepest,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: most invisible secrets of the cosmos.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: It proves it's sometimes the most advanced technology we possess
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: is the natural physics of the world itself, provided we
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: are clever enough to decipher the math to listen to it.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: So, just to recap this incredible journey, for decades, scientists
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: have known that roughly twenty five percent of the universe
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: is missing. The spinning plates of galaxies told us the
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: invisible strings of dark matter are there, but despite its
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: massive gravitational footprint, we couldn't find its particles. These unimaginably
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: tiny axions and dark photons using traditional lab magnets. The
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: closet was just too small for the butterflynet way too small,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: So a team of researchers mathematically unlock the Earth's atmosphere,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: factoring in electrical drag to prove that the gap between
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: the ground and the ionosphere acts as a giant acoustic
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: guitar body for electromagnetism YEP. By meticulously cleaning ten years
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: of noisy geomagnetic data from a quiet Scottish village, they
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: set limits one hundred times tighter than ever before, rivaling
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: our best space telescopes, and most exciting of all, they
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: uncovered mysterious new signal candidates that just might be the
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: dark photons we've been hunting for.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: It is a phenomenal leak forward, yeah, and it leads
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: us standing on the threshold of something incredibly exciting. We
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: have finally turned the planet on as a scientific.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Instrument, which leaves you with something pretty wild to think
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: about the next time you step outside and look up
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: at the sky. If our own atmosphere and magnetic field
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: are naturally humming and amplifying the faint signals of the
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: universe's most elusive invisible particles. What other invisible cosmic conversations?
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Is the Earth constantly translating right beneath our feet, just
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: waiting for us to figure out the right mathematical frequency
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: to listen to