Research In Former South Dakota Gold Mine, Search For Dark Matter Forming Universe

Research looking for the origin of the universe is carried out in gold mines. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA – There is dark matter that makes up 85 percent of all matter in the universe, but no one has ever proven its existence.

A team of 250 scientists are working at an abandoned South Dakota gold mine where they are building a massive dark matter detector called LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), and the machine recently delivered its first data points.

Frank Wolfs, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rochester, who oversees Rochester's efforts on the project, said in a statement:

"We didn't see any dark matter, but the first results of LZ show that it is currently the most sensitive dark matter detector in the world," Wolf said. "LZ will collect data over about 1,000 days, significantly increasing the sensitivity for dark matter detection. achieved during the first data collection period.”

The team has only been working underground for two months, while the experiment is scheduled to last five years. Even though the first data point is empty, they hope LZ will pick up on signs of the elusive particle before the mission is complete.

The team believes the detector will return 20 times more data during the experiment and the chances of finding dark matter with LZ. "maybe less than 50 percent but more than 10 percent," said Hugh Lippincott, physicist and experimental spokesman at a press conference Thursday, July 7 as reported by CBS News.

The idea of dark matter, originally known as 'missing matter', was formulated in 1933, following the discovery that the mass of all stars in the Coma galaxy cluster uses about one percent of the mass needed to keep the galaxy from escaping the cluster's gravity. This theory is certainly interesting.

Decades later in the 1970s, American astronomers Vera Rubin and Kent Ford discovered anomalies in the orbits of stars in the galaxy.

The discovery sparked theories among the scientific community that the anomaly was caused by an invisible mass of 'dark matter' located in and around the galaxy. But since then it remains only a theory.

The team in South Dakota is just one of many teams hoping to be the first to prove dark matter exists. The team made the 10-minute trek to the mine wearing protective gear.

"All of our electronics have been designed specifically for the LZ with the aim of maximizing our sensitivity to the smallest possible signal," Wolfs said, as quoted by the Daily Mail.

LZ was specifically designed to search for theoretical types of particles called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. The key is the two tanks connected to the detector.

The tank is filled with 22,046 pounds of highly pure liquid xenon, which is a colorless, solid, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts.

The atomic properties of xenon allow them to produce light in certain particle interactions.

If or when a theoretical particle is detected, a series of light and electrical signals will be triggered in the tank.