Making light twist into a bowtie may reveal dark matter

Enlarge / Puttin' on an axion. (credit: Stephen Kennedy / Flickr)
Dark matter is a theory that is excellent for inspiring new theories. It also seems to be an excellent way to generate new and expensive detector hardware. A new paper bucks the trend, though, proposing a dark-matter experiment that seems almost... cheap.
Chris’ theory of theoretical physics
I have a rather dark view of theoretical physics.
Unbeknownst to most, theoretical physicists (there is no other type) increase their stability by splitting into two, which happens during a process known as defending a PhD. During this fission, new dark-matter-particle candidates are emitted, mostly of a variety called axions. Whenever there is a conference of theoretical physicists, critical mass is exceeded, and an explosion of more dark-matter-candidate particles is produced. These events will occasionally emit large and expensive experiments.
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