Unbeknownst to you, 500 million dark matter particles every second are streaming through your body. Tonight, you’ll be able to feel dark matter.

We designed a planetarium — a space where people could be transported away. Inside, we created a multisensory voyage that incorporated sound, smell, taste, and tactile sensation. People felt carried through this dark matter universe journey.

Sensitive dark matter detectors are built at the bottom of caves to try and catch the soft tingling of dark matter particles. In our installation, your hand became such a detector.

If you think about dark matter on a personal level, it doesn’t affect us — it passes right through, like a sieve. But on the scale of humanity, Earth, or the galaxy, it is hugely important. Dark matter interacts through gravity, and there’s a great deal of it in our galaxy. It acts as a kind of glue — a gravitational glue holding galaxies together.

The idea was to translate the presence of dark matter and help people understand how much is around us. Many modern physics concepts — quantum mechanics, gravitational waves, the Higgs boson — are things we cannot directly perceive. But our senses beyond vision — touch, smell, even taste — can be enlisted to help us experience these abstract phenomena.

For example, we used black pepper essential oil. Its pungent, cold smell evoked the sense of space. Smell became one layer of representation.

Participants described the experience as unexpected and immersive. You could feel it, hear it, see it, and even smell it. One participant said the highlight was the powder placed in the mouth — the crackling sound heightened the experience, as though it was resonating in their ears as well as on their tongue.

Thinking about the universe this way changes perspective. If 95% of the universe is dark, and a great part of that is dark matter, it reframes our outlook. Looking up at the night sky, we realize that most of what’s out there is still to be discovered. It fills us with wonder and excitement.