NAUTILUS EDUCATION | BETA PRODUCT Going Dark: Scavenging Exotic Matter Contrary to popular belief, Einstein’s theory of rela- Instead of scavenging hydrogen gas, JiaLiu,aphysics tivity does not rule that out completely. According to graduate student at New York University, has pro- the theory, space and time are elastic; what we perceive posed foraging for dark matter, the invisible exotic as the force of gravity 1s in fact the warping of space and material that astronomers think makes up the bulk time. In principle, you could warp space so severely that of the galaxy. Particle physicists hypothesize that you’d shorten the distance you want to cross, like fold- dark matter consists of a type of particle called the mgarug to bring the two sides closer together. If so, you neutralino, which has a useful property: When two could cross any distance instantaneously. You wouldn’t neutralinos collide, they annihilate each other in a even notice the acceleration, because the field would blaze of gamma rays. Such reactions could drive a zero out g-forces inside the ship. The view from the ship ship forward. Like the hydrogen scooper, a dark-mat- windows would be stunning. Stars would change in col- ter ship could approach the speed of light. The prob- — or and shift toward the axis of motion. lem, though, is that dark matter is dark—meaning it It seems almost mean-spirited to point out how far doesn’t respond to electromagnetic forces. Physicists beyond our current technology this idea is. Warp drive know of no way to collect it, let alone channel it to would require a type of material that exerts a gravita- produce rocket thrust. tional push rather than a gravitational pull. Such mate- If engineers somehow overcame these problems rial contains a negative amount of energy—tliterally less and built a near-light-speed ship, not just Alpha Cen- than nothing, as if you had a mass of —50 kilograms. tauri but the entire galaxy would come within range. Physicists, inventive types