World's Most Sensitive Device Could Not Get Signals 'Coz It's For WIMPS, not Dark Matter

Dark matter detector extremely sensitive, but comes up with nothing close about the dark matter. The possible attributes of dark matter is narrowed down further by scientists.

The Dark Matter Conference occurred on July 21 in Sheffield, United Kingdom. The researchers of dark matter presented their results to fellow colleagues who continue to pursue their hunt for dark matter.

For years, the Dark matter is said to be composed of more than a fifth of the universe mass, but researchers have not seen first hand. The dark matter device called LUX is said to be the world's most sensitive device since 2013.

Dark matter researcher and physicist at Brown University, Rick Gaitskell, made a statement at the Dark Matter Conference that the final result for the dark matter search pushed the LUX beyond its capability leading to four times the instrument's performance level.

The Dark matter device is situated 1.6 kilometers underground in the previous South Dakota gold mine and is now known as the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The dark matter research is conducted in the facility where the dark matter device, LUX, is suspended in a ton of liquid xenon.

The liquid xenon is responsible for lighting up with an electrical charge causing a flash of light to be captured by sensors when dark matter particles collide with its own atoms. The research is performed underground between tons of rocks above it to prevent anything from disturbing the research. The dark matter research results proved nothing.

Gaitskell said that the dark matter research would have been a breakthrough if the device could have delivered a dark matter signal that was clear. However, the researchers observed that dark matter is consistent with the background alone, Mirror reported.

Dark matter has never been directly observed by scientists, but they are reportedly sure that it plays a key in the universe. The dark matter contributed to the way galaxies rotate and how light bends when passing through dark matter. These have added to the system's gravitational force.

However, the dark matter device LUX was designed to hunt for WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles that leads to dark matter. The WIMPs are up to 100 times the mass of a single proton and interacts very weakly to ordinary matter. Thus, makes it difficult for dark matter scientists to detect them, Daily Mail reported.

The dark matter study may have produced a null result, but most avid dark matter scientists believes that is is still significant. A new dark matter device, LUX-Zeplin, will perform a sensitivity to dark matter that is 70 times more sensitive than its predecessor.