WORLD
Can`t afford a particle detector? Use a black hole, say scientists, who believe they can harness destructive giants in name of science
Baku, June 23 (AZERTAC). Scientists believe they can find a way to spot previously undetected particles - by watching them hanging out at the corner of black holes.
Finding new particles usually requires high amounts of energies - that is why huge accelerators have been built, which can accelerate particles to almost the speed of light.
But the cost of progress is prohibitive - for example, see the Large Hadron Collider, which took 30 years to build at a cost of around £3.7billion.
But there are other creative ways of finding new particles: At the Vienna University of Technology, scientists presented a method to prove the existence of hypothetical `axions`.
These particles, with a very low mass, could accumulate around a black hole and extract energy from it. This process could emit gravity waves, which could then be measured.
Daniel Grumiller and Gabriela Mocanu, from the university, have now set out to detect the particles.
Dr Grumiller, a theoretical physicist, said: `The existence of axions is not proven, but it is considered to be quite likely`.The team believe that axions can circle a black hole, in a similar way to how electrons circle the nucleus of an atom, except that this time, it is gravity rather than electromagnetic force that binds the two together.