Physicists on the CDMS experiment have devised a better way to search for a particle that, if it exists, will revolutionize our ideas about dark matter.
The pursuit of dark matter and dark energy is one of the most exciting—and most challenging—areas of science. Now researchers think they’re beginning to close in.
A growing number of scientists are looking for ways to join a dream team of experiments in a unique laboratory a mile and a half underground in Ontario. There, they seek to solve some of the biggest mysteries in physics today, including the case of missing dark matter.
Filled with rare, low-radioactivity material, the DarkSide-50 experiment will have some of the lowest background rates of any dark-matter detector. That should help it detect highly sought-after dark-matter candidates called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.
A growing suite of computational instruments is helping scientists determine how fast local concentrations of dark matter move, which in turn could help them cut in on the dance of dark matter particles.
The search for dark matter runs deep with physicists Blas Cabrera and Bernard Sadoulet, who have chased this mystery far underground and will be recognized for their work as joint recipients of the 2013 W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics.
