Researchers have developed a novel method to probe dark matter utilizing expansive crystals of sucrose, or table sugar, yet their findings thus far yield nothing more than a bittersweet outcome.

Dark matter is believed to exist due to its elusive gravitational pull on galaxies; however, despite decades of exploration for potential dark matter particles, little evidence has surfaced. Historically, many searches focused on weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), considered leading candidates for dark matter. Yet, even the most meticulous searches have proven fruitless.

Conventional WIMP detectors aim to identify light flashes produced by interactions between dark matter particles and regular matter, assuming that these particles are relatively sizable, around 2 to 10,000 times the mass of a proton. Although this explanation is the most straightforward, the possibility exists that WIMPs are lighter, albeit creating challenges with the theory.

Recently, Federica Petricca and her team at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany, have sought these lighter WIMPs utilizing a detector constructed from sugar crystals chilled to extremely low temperatures.

Very light WIMPs are expected to predominantly interact with extremely light atoms like hydrogen; however, utilizing pure hydrogen as a detector is challenging due to its low density, which diminishes interaction probabilities. On the other hand, sucrose comprises 22 hydrogen atoms in each molecule, leading to a significantly higher density than pure hydrogen.

Petricca and her colleagues initially cultivated sucrose crystals from a concentrated sugar solution over the span of a week before reducing the temperature of the crystals to 7 thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. They monitored potential dark matter interactions by employing highly sensitive thermometers to detect minimal heat increases and photon sensors to register flashes of light.

Following 19 hours of experimentation, the sugar crystals did emit light at levels comparable to interactions with larger particles; however, they did not capture the weaker signals that might indicate the presence of WIMPs.

Scientists assert that sugar crystals offer surprising sensitivity for detecting potential dark matter interactions. Carlos Blanco of Penn State notes that researchers may be able to identify subtle recoils from lightweight WIMPs. However, it remains uncertain if this experiment can effectively exclude other potential sources of crystal formation, like radioactive carbon-14, commonly present in various sugars.

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