LHC May Hint at Macroscopic Dark Matter
Researchers propose that macroscopic dark matter candidates called axion quark nuggets could pass through Earth and generate a faint acoustic disturbance that dislodges dust in the LHC, causing beam-loss events detectable by the collider’s existing monitors. They urge reanalyzing past unidentified falling object (UFO) events for a fingerprint of three or more correlated disturbances in the 27-km tunnel, suggesting a new way to search for dark matter without hardware changes. Publication is planned in Physical Review D.
