Five years after practical fusion (“a decade away”) does seem about right to me.
SweetChiliCheese on
There is no dark matter. It will be proven way faster than 15 years.
Beetin on
Note:
15 years always means “at some point”, as it is the maximum timeline given for any future technology.
15 years is the amount of time that allows, in 5-10 years time, for you to revise the estimate back to 15 years, without catching much flack. It is also the average lifespan of a company listed on the S&P 500, so companies saying ‘in 15 years’ means “sometime after this company is dead’. Companies and Governments saying ‘in 10 years’ means ‘long after our shareholders/voters care’. 5 years is ‘the next groups problem’ and only once you hit 3-5 years are you in ‘this is a real thing’ territory.
Opposite-Chemistry-0 on
Yeh sure it will. How many billions go to that “maybe?” experiment. Science funding should go to practical issues like biodiversity, energy, climate, medical treatment
Andromeda321 on
Radio astronomer here! I wouldn’t bet the farm on this just yet.
To begin, [dark matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter) makes up roughly a quarter of the “stuff” in the universe, and is what keeps galaxies from flying apart. (It is NOT related to dark energy, which is what drives the accelerated expansion of the universe.) Dark matter is most likely some sort of particle based on observations of it in space, [like this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster)- one that interacts gravitationally, but not really electromagnetically. There are many models for what kind of particle it could be, one of which is the [axion.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion) That’s the one this article is about today.
Now, what [this paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08862-x) says is *if* dark matter is axions, you could send a signal out at space at a frequency which would create an excitation in the axion particles, allowing you to detect them. (Although basically all dark matter is outside the optical part of the galaxy, you should have a few particles that come closer at lower amounts- that’s what dark matter detectors look for.) The big news here is the researchers managed to do this in a lab- that is, get this frequency to emit. So that’s really cool- we can actually *do* it over theorizing about it!
Now, obviously it’s one thing to get this to work in a lab and one thing to get this to work on a detectable level. But the timing of this is good- dark matter detectors on Earth are starting to get to the point where they are passing detectable limits, so it might be time to look in a new direction. You also have big radio telescopes coming online that will help a ton with any detection, like the [Square Kilometer Array (SKA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array) in South Africa and Australia. It’s gonna be hard… but now possible over purely theoretical, and that’s a huge hurdle.
5 Comments
Five years after practical fusion (“a decade away”) does seem about right to me.
There is no dark matter. It will be proven way faster than 15 years.
Note:
15 years always means “at some point”, as it is the maximum timeline given for any future technology.
15 years is the amount of time that allows, in 5-10 years time, for you to revise the estimate back to 15 years, without catching much flack. It is also the average lifespan of a company listed on the S&P 500, so companies saying ‘in 15 years’ means “sometime after this company is dead’. Companies and Governments saying ‘in 10 years’ means ‘long after our shareholders/voters care’. 5 years is ‘the next groups problem’ and only once you hit 3-5 years are you in ‘this is a real thing’ territory.
Yeh sure it will. How many billions go to that “maybe?” experiment. Science funding should go to practical issues like biodiversity, energy, climate, medical treatment
Radio astronomer here! I wouldn’t bet the farm on this just yet.
To begin, [dark matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter) makes up roughly a quarter of the “stuff” in the universe, and is what keeps galaxies from flying apart. (It is NOT related to dark energy, which is what drives the accelerated expansion of the universe.) Dark matter is most likely some sort of particle based on observations of it in space, [like this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster)- one that interacts gravitationally, but not really electromagnetically. There are many models for what kind of particle it could be, one of which is the [axion.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion) That’s the one this article is about today.
Now, what [this paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08862-x) says is *if* dark matter is axions, you could send a signal out at space at a frequency which would create an excitation in the axion particles, allowing you to detect them. (Although basically all dark matter is outside the optical part of the galaxy, you should have a few particles that come closer at lower amounts- that’s what dark matter detectors look for.) The big news here is the researchers managed to do this in a lab- that is, get this frequency to emit. So that’s really cool- we can actually *do* it over theorizing about it!
Now, obviously it’s one thing to get this to work in a lab and one thing to get this to work on a detectable level. But the timing of this is good- dark matter detectors on Earth are starting to get to the point where they are passing detectable limits, so it might be time to look in a new direction. You also have big radio telescopes coming online that will help a ton with any detection, like the [Square Kilometer Array (SKA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array) in South Africa and Australia. It’s gonna be hard… but now possible over purely theoretical, and that’s a huge hurdle.