Space
Invisible Dark Matter Definitely Can't Be Seen, Scientists Say
Brooke James
First Posted: Jul 22, 2016 04:29 AM EDT
For three years, scientists have been looking for dark matter, which, despite being invisible, is said to make up over four-fifths of the matter in the universe. Unfortunately, their efforts have come up empty-handed.
On Thursday, scientists announced at a conference that they did not find the elusive matter that they have been searching for despite the presence of sensitive equipment that exceeded technological goals in a $10-million project.
University of California Berkely physicist Daniel McKinsey said, "We're sort of proud that it worked so well and also disappointed that we didn't see anything."
The mine project, which is called the Large Underground Xenon experiment (LUX) was one of three places where teams were looking for dark matter. Another on the International Space Station, while the last one is at the Large Hadron Collider, which is run by the European consortium, and has found the Higgs Boson particle.
The site in South Dakota, however, dug up more than 4,800 feet of earth to screen out background radiation, to no avail. Using a large vat of liquid xenon, they hoped they would produce a flash of light in the event that they interact with weakly interacting particles (WIMPS) when these bounce off super-cooled liquid.
Being unable to find WIMPS may drive physicists to think about other ways to find dark matter, despite the fact that the WIMPS are still the most viable option, said Neal Weiner, the director of the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University.
The Daily Mail noted that Scientists are already revamping the South Dakota mine site for a $50 million larger, higher-tech version of the LUX, called LZ - which will be 70 times more sensitive than the previous model and should begin operations by 2020.
Dark matter is everywhere - scientists think that hundreds and millions of dark matter particles pass through the earth every second - but they problem is that they are "crazy week" and they zip through the planet as if they barely exist.
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First Posted: Jul 22, 2016 04:29 AM EDT
For three years, scientists have been looking for dark matter, which, despite being invisible, is said to make up over four-fifths of the matter in the universe. Unfortunately, their efforts have come up empty-handed.
On Thursday, scientists announced at a conference that they did not find the elusive matter that they have been searching for despite the presence of sensitive equipment that exceeded technological goals in a $10-million project.
University of California Berkely physicist Daniel McKinsey said, "We're sort of proud that it worked so well and also disappointed that we didn't see anything."
The mine project, which is called the Large Underground Xenon experiment (LUX) was one of three places where teams were looking for dark matter. Another on the International Space Station, while the last one is at the Large Hadron Collider, which is run by the European consortium, and has found the Higgs Boson particle.
The site in South Dakota, however, dug up more than 4,800 feet of earth to screen out background radiation, to no avail. Using a large vat of liquid xenon, they hoped they would produce a flash of light in the event that they interact with weakly interacting particles (WIMPS) when these bounce off super-cooled liquid.
Being unable to find WIMPS may drive physicists to think about other ways to find dark matter, despite the fact that the WIMPS are still the most viable option, said Neal Weiner, the director of the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University.
The Daily Mail noted that Scientists are already revamping the South Dakota mine site for a $50 million larger, higher-tech version of the LUX, called LZ - which will be 70 times more sensitive than the previous model and should begin operations by 2020.
Dark matter is everywhere - scientists think that hundreds and millions of dark matter particles pass through the earth every second - but they problem is that they are "crazy week" and they zip through the planet as if they barely exist.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone