A U.S. team of researchers hunting for dark matter in a former gold mine in South Dakota, said Wednesday that the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment has proven itself to be the most sensitive dark matter detector ever created.
Announcing the first results from the test’s initial 90-day run during a seminar at the Sanford Lab in Lead, S.D., the team said they have obtained results that are “the first physics outcomes achieved since the Ray Davis solar neutrino experiment, which earned him a Nobel Prize for Physics.”
“LUX is blazing the path to illuminate the nature of dark matter,” said Brown University physicist Rick Gaitskell, co-spokesperson for LUX with physicist Dan McKinsey of Yale University.
The scientists have been working at the one-of-a-kind laboratory located at the bottom of what was once North America’s deepest gold mine, hoping to find more definitive evidence of the mysterious substance estimated to make up as much as 85% of the universe’s total matter.
“This is only the beginning for LUX,” said team leader Dan McKinsey. “Now that we understand the instrument and its backgrounds, we will continue to take data, testing for more and more elusive candidates for dark matter.”
Less than 15% of the universe is made up of conventional matter — protons, neutrons, and electrons. Most of the rest is thought to be dark matter, which cannot be seen or felt, and seems to interact weakly, if at all, with conventional matter. (Hence the nickname for dark matter particles — WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles.) Identifying the raw material of the universe is a high priority for physicists and astronomers.
8 Comments
Ettore Greco
Contrary to what science still believes, at the time of the Big Bang
there were no atoms but only waves carrying energy through the infinite
Void. If we could view the Universe from outside, It would look like an
egg-shaped cloud with winds running in perpetual motion inside of It.
The energy is like those winds running at maximum speed and pushing out
the borders of the Universe. The Universe continues to expand as the
waves that travel at the border of the Universe do not encounter any
interference from the Void (or antimatter as they call it). These waves
will forever expand the Space of the Universe they create and leave
behind. Wave-behavior relates to the medium in which the waves travel.
Thus, wave-behavior at the border of the Universe is different than
wave-behavior within the Universe. Inside the Universe, waves change
their frequencies by colliding with other energy during their travel.
These waves, because of the encountered interference, continue to
transform part of their original energy in other forms. Waves travel
gradually releasing heat, or amounts of energy, and their original short
wavelengths, in time become longer and longer as they carry less and
less energy than they did when they first started to travel. These waves
lose energy releasing it in form of other waves with wavelengths longer
than their own.For example, the gamma rays, over time, diminish their
energy level (and their frequency) to become X rays, from X rays they
will become ultraviolet and so on. The original quantum is not lost but
distributed into other forms of energy through “spontaneous symmetry
breaking”. Once reached an almost flat longitude (and lower critical
energy level) these waves solidify into hydrogen atoms breaking up their
energy in opposite elements, like the split ends of a broken hair. When
the hydrogen atoms are reached by the heat of other incoming waves they
fuse together to create more complex forms of energy. The Human being,
like all mass in the Universe, is the product of a gradual change began
with the transformation of waves while the Universe instead is like one
broken mirror formed by the symmetry of Its fragments.
http://www.wavevolution.org/en/freethinking.html
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wavevolution
Alan
Well, now that the mystery of the universe is solved maybe we can figure out some of life’s other irritations like keeping cat liter in the liter box, preventing honey from sticking to the outside of the jar and how to keep window’s based pc’s from freezing.
Zee Flynn
Of course they won’t find the Dark Matter. I have it very well hidden in the bottom of my sock drawer. They’ll NEVER look in there for it! Aha ha ha ha HA!
Gary
It was toss up with the scientists as to which project to tackle, dark matter or for males to understand females. They took the easiest choice.
Xstratos
Black Holes create Dark Matter until it swallows 2 giants at once illuminating the dark Matter as Gama Ray Burst
Xstratos
Quantum Gravity Is the result of all the un seen singularity Black Holes that gives galaxies it shape depending on its super massive Black hole in its center.
Mike Shultz
turn the light on. USA is dark matter of concern (called economy 101) Dark Matter.
Mark
I thought dark matter had already been discovered, dark matter is key to the current scientific theories, about how everything comes from nothing. The results will none the less bevery interesting. Good use for an old mine!