Scientists have been searching for dark matter for decades. They haven’t found it – every experiment they’ve devised has come up empty. But they haven’t given up. Among other ideas, they’re thinking about ways to use moons, planets, and stars as detectors.

Dark matter appears to make up about 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. We know it’s there because its gravity pulls on the visible stars and galaxies around it.

Dark matter may consist of a type of particle that almost never interacts with normal matter. But it should interact just enough to reveal its nature.

Experiments here on Earth haven’t seen any such interactions. So some scientists recommend using astronomical objects instead of lab experiments.

Blobs of dark matter might enfold a binary star system. The dark matter’s gravity could pull the two stars away from each other. And dark matter might clump together to make a special kind of star. Both of those might be detectable with current telescopes.

Smaller blobs might slam into an icy moon, creating a special kind of crater. Such craters could be visible on Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter. Two missions on their way to Jupiter might be able to see them.

And dark matter might fall into the center of a planet and hang around. If enough builds up, it could heat the planet’s interior. So by studying many planets in other star systems, we might see some that are unusually warm – heated up by encounters with dark matter.

Script by Damond Benningfield