Seonjeong Oh

A metal resonator, chilled to near absolute zero, listens to the radio noise of the universe. Amid the chaos of thermal fluctuations and electronics, a faint peak might emerge — the trace of an axion, a particle that could make up dark matter.

Picture a radio receiver with a single tuning knob that moves all of its internal coils at once, like one living organism. That is exactly how a new instrument for the search for the axion works, a particle that may fill galaxies with invisible mass. Inside a copper cylinder the height of a coffee can sit rods of aluminum oxide.