Are we any closer to detecting dark matter?

NPR's Scott Detrow talks with theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University about a strange blip recorded by a dark matter detector in South Dakota and what the fluke could mean. NPR Science LISTEN & FOLLOW NPR App Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music iHeart Radio RSS link Science Are we any closer to detecting dark matter? September 9, 20264:54 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered By  Fio Geiran ,  Scott Detrow ,  Christopher Intagliata Are we any closer to detecting dark matter? Listen · Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed <iframe src="https://www. npr. org/player/embed/nx-s1-5954173/nx-s1-9919984" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript NPR's Scott Detrow talks with theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University about a strange blip recorded by a dark matter detector in South Dakota and what the fluke could mean. Transcript SCOTT DETROW, HOST: Dark matter is one of the strangest puzzles of modern science. This invisible substance makes up about 85% of the total matter in the universe - much, much more than the stuff we can see. Yet despite dark matter's abundance, scientists still have not directly detected it after decades of searching. One of the experiments built to detect it sits in an old gold mine about a mile underground in South Dakota. And scientists there just announced a strange event they cannot explain, renewing excitement around the hunt for dark matter. Here to unpack it all with us is Priyamvada Natarajan, chair of the Department of Astronomy at Yale University. She's a dark matter expert but wasn't part of the experiment. DETROW: What is it like to be an expert in something nobody has ever verified or seen?(LAUGHTER)NATARAJAN: Well, you know, all my work is relevant to the invisible universe. What does one do with a lifetime dedicated to the things that are not seen? Well, they're not directly seen, right? So that's what's amazing about dark matter. Even though dark matter itself does not emit, absorb or reflect light, right? Which is how we actually - light is the cosmic messenger. And because it doesn't interact with light, we don't actually directly see it, but we see it indirectly. Dark matter, for example, because it's matter, it has gravity, and so it impacts the motions of objects - right? - of stars that are visible matter, and that's how we infer its presence. And the challenge has always been - like we see this on astronomical scales, right?