Feb 08 2021 Read 383 Times
The Science and Technologies Facilities Council, (STFC) has provided £7.2m of initial funding to the Atom Interferometry Observatory and Network (AION), an interdisciplinary mission that will harness cold atom technologies to address key issues in fundamental physics, astrophysics and cosmology that can be realised in the next few decades.
The AION consortium, led by Imperial researchers, will enable a ground-breaking search for ultra-light candidates for dark matter – a mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the ‘missing’ matter of the universe – and also pave the way for the exploration of gravitational waves – ripples in spacetime created by huge astronomical events. An interdisciplinary team at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, will be responsible for the design and build of a 10-metre atom interferometer that will advance understanding of dark matter and enable observation of gravitational waves in an entirely new frequency range.