University of Minnesota Researchers Discover rare subatomic particles

Note: This is an article from an external source not my own.

As you probably know by now, one of the most long-lasting, and equally unfruitful scientific endeavors of our times has been the search for dark matter. The stuff is believed to make up a significant portion of the matter that exists in our Universe, and physicists have inferred its existence from the gravitational pull it exerts on normal matter. Galaxies are apparently kept in their place through this effect, but no one has thus far been able to discover the particles that make up dark matter. One reason for this is that it does not interact with regular matter, which means that it doesn't give off any kind of radiations. But now scientists are hot on a lead that could see them finding the stuff here on Earth.


Many experts believe that dark matter may be passing through objects such as your hand, your car, your home, and indeed the planet with ease, without bouncing off a single atom. This is one of the main reasons why several research initiatives have taken their studies underground, in detecting facilities buried miles under the surface of the planet. Their hope is to be there, prepared to detect dark matter bouncing off regular matter, if and when this happens. “They're just streaming right through us, and every once in while there's an interaction,” University of Minnesota expert Angela Reisseter said.

She was speaking at a meeting of the American Physical Society, which took place earlier this month in Washington, DC. The scientist is a member of a large-scale, dark matter-hunting project called the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS). She and her team believe that they may have detected two such rare instances. But in a recent issue of the journal Science Express, the CDMS team writes that these are mere probabilities. “Our previous results have been no, no, no. This is our first maybe – that is all it is,” Reisseter added. She shares that the detectors, buried 700 meters underground in Minnesota, are protected by several layers of material, including rock, plastic, lead, and copper.

The point of all these protective layers is to prevent any other type of radiation reaching the detectors but dark matter. Speaking further about the two possible dark matter detection events, the expert added that, “If it was one, we'd say 'Oh, it's the background.' If it was three you start to say 'Oh, it's a signal.' We can't call it background and we can't call it signal.” A different approach to detecting dark matter may be through the recently reopened Large Hadron Collider, the largest physical experiment, and particle accelerator, ever built.

“It could be that now we have this new machine we'll finally have enough energy to make this dark matter particle and see it in our collisions,” University of Maryland physicist Sarah Eno, who is also a member of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment team, explained recently. The CMS is one of the three main particle detectors at the LHC, Space reports.