{"id":216634,"date":"2025-06-26T01:21:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T06:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/a-magnetically-levitated-particle-enables-researchers-to-search-for-ultralight-dark-matter"},"modified":"2025-06-26T01:21:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T06:21:05","slug":"a-magnetically-levitated-particle-enables-researchers-to-search-for-ultralight-dark-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/a-magnetically-levitated-particle-enables-researchers-to-search-for-ultralight-dark-matter","title":{"rendered":"A magnetically levitated particle enables researchers to search for ultralight dark matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-magnetically-levitated-particle-enables-researchers-to-search-for-ultralight-dark-matter.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dark matter, although not visible, is believed to make up most of the total mass of the universe. One theory suggests that ultralight dark matter behaves like a continuous wave, which could exert rhythmic forces that are detectable only with ultra-sensitive quantum instrumentation.<\/p>\n<p>New research <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/PhysRevLett.134.251001\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i> and led by Rice University physicist Christopher Tunnell and postdoctoral researcher Dorian Amaral, the study\u2019s first author and lead analyst, sees the first direct search for ultralight <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/dark+matter\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">dark matter<\/a> using a magnetically levitated particle.<\/p>\n<p>In collaboration with physicists from Leiden University, the team suspended a microscopic neodymium magnet inside a superconducting enclosure cooled to near absolute zero. The setup was designed to detect subtle oscillations believed to be caused by dark matter waves moving through Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dark matter, although not visible, is believed to make up most of the total mass of the universe. One theory suggests that ultralight dark matter behaves like a continuous wave, which could exert rhythmic forces that are detectable only with ultra-sensitive quantum instrumentation. New research published in Physical Review Letters and led by Rice University [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}