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The idea is pretty exciting, says Dan Hooper, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. “Although there are many details yet to be demonstrated before this kind of programme could be realistically implemented, I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t succeed, at least in principle.”
But others, such as physicist Juan Collar of the University of Chicago in Illinois, strike a more cautionary note. In the mid-1990s, physicists considered using the mineral mica as a target for similar searches for dark matter2. But Collar subsequently showed3 that radioactivity from uranium in the minerals would create tracks in the mica that would be impossible to distinguish from those created by WIMPs. He fears a similar fate would befall Freese’s proposal.
“This issue is not limited to mica, but instead affects any mineral containing the ubiquitous natural abundance of uranium and thorium,” he says. “They may be able to find minerals where this problem is reduced, but I think that right now their claims are way too optimistic.”
Freese acknowledges that uranium is a concern, although it's unclear whether the minerals that she and her team propose contain uranium or thorium contaminants. But she adds that it might be possible to identify specific etching patterns that can be created only by a burst of radioactivity, and to ignore them. “The truth is you have to do it and find out,” she says.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-05660-6
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References
Baum, S. Drukier, A. K., Freese, K., Górski, M. & Stengel, P. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05991 (2018).
Snowden-Ifft, E. P., Freeman, E. S. & Price, P. B. Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4133 (1995).
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Collar, J. I. Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 331 (1996).
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