A CHANCE discovery by cosmologists searching for dark matter – the elusive stuff thought to make up most of the mass in the universe – could lead to the development of an ultra-sensitive probe that can spot cracks in materials opening up, even when they’re only a few atoms long.
Dark matter detectors at the Cryogenic Rare Event Search using Superconducting Thermometers (CRESST) underground laboratory at Gran Sasso, Italy, were being put through preliminary tests in 1999 when they began recording thousands of times more signals than expected. “We were very disturbed,” says Leo Stodolsky, a team member at the Max Planck…
