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Dark matter: search for the invisible begins in an old gold mine:
Scientists know that it makes up most of the universe's mass, but they don't know what it is ... or exactly how to find it
In a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank filled with a rare liquified gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable: dark matter.
Scientists are pretty sure the invisible stuff makes up most of the universe's mass and say we wouldn't be here without it – but they don't know what it is. The race to solve this enormous mystery has brought one team to the depths under Lead, South Dakota.
The question for scientists is basic, said Kevin Lesko, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "What is this great place I live in? Right now, 95% of it is a mystery."
The idea is that a mile of dirt and rock, a giant tank, a second tank and the purest titanium in the world will block nearly all the cosmic rays and particles that zip around and through all of us every day. But dark matter particles, scientists think, can avoid all those obstacles. They hope one will fly into the vat of liquid xenon in the inner tank and smash into a xenon nucleus like two balls in a game of pool, revealing its existence in a flash of light seen by a device called "the time projection chamber".
Scientists announced on Thursday that the five-year, $60m search finally got under way two months ago after a delay caused by the pandemic. So far the device has found ... nothing. At least no dark matter.
That's OK, they say. The equipment appears to be working to filter out most of the background radiation they hoped to block. "To search for this very rare type of interaction, job number one is to first get rid of all of the ordinary sources of radiation, which would overwhelm the experiment," said University of Maryland physicist Carter Hall.
And if all their calculations and theories are right, they figure they will see only a couple of fleeting signs of dark matter a year. The team of 250 scientists estimates they will get 20 times more data over the next couple of years.
By the time the experiment finishes, the chance of finding dark matter with this device is "probably less than 50% but more than 10%", said Hugh Lippincott, a physicist and spokesman for the experiment in a Thursday news conference.
[...] These scientists tried a similar, smaller experiment here years ago. After coming up empty, they figured they had to go much bigger. Another large-scale experiment is under way in Italy run by a rival team, but no results have been announced so far.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @04:27PM (5 children)
I've only needed a scientist once in my life and it wasn''t to search for the invisible in an old gold mine. It was to hook up my satellite TV. Now I've got cable, I don't know why we need so many scientists. $60m is a lot of Friends episides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @04:51PM
Most scientists don't actually do the work themselves but contract it out to foreign ghost-writers who can churn out product efficiently, without the overhead of healthcare, pension, or data. Advances in AI have essentially made it possible to fill 5 trashcans of articles in the time it used to take to fill 1.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @07:03PM
Don't let them fool you. They know there's still gold in them thar hills, and only these experiments can find it.
(Score: 2) by higuita on Monday July 11 2022, @09:30PM (2 children)
"I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of Giants."
- Isaac Newton
that scientist could only that satellite TV because other scientists worked in many other fields, many theoretical only! worse, you wouldn't have any friends episodes without them. we need to understand how things work to be able to use most of them. Confirming that black matter really work is enough to better understand how the universe work and unblock other works.
what it can produce in the future is really unknown, just like when Arquimedes was clueless how a bath and a gold statue would allow way later hydraulic systems and way later, placing your TV satellite on orbit
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @10:27PM (1 child)
That quote is out of date. Now it goes more like "stepping on the heads of grad students".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @10:45PM
In grad school we used to say that we can't see very far because all these people are standing on us.