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lux-dark-mater-detector

One of the fundamental challenges of researching dark matter is our inability to notice information technology. While it constitutes an estimated 27% of all the estimated mass and free energy in the appreciable universe, it doesn't collaborate with any type of electromagnetic radiations. Scientists have worked for years to endeavor and discover direct testify of dark matter's existence, but to little avail. After its final, twenty-calendar month run, the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) nighttime matter experiment team reported that they had failed to detect whatsoever of the particles they were looking for.

"LUX has delivered the world's all-time search sensitivity since its outset run in 2013," said Rick Gaitskell, physics professor at Dark-brown University and co-spokesperson for the LUX project. "With this terminal effect from the 2014-2016 search, the scientists of the LUX Collaboration take pushed the sensitivity of the instrument to a final functioning level that is 4 times ameliorate than the original project goals. It would have been marvelous if the improved sensitivity had as well delivered a articulate dark matter bespeak. However, what we take observed is consistent with background alone."

LUX dark matter

The LUX detector is i of a kind, an exquisitely sensitive detector designed to choice up signs of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) during ane of the rare interactions betwixt dark matter and normal matter. LUX consists of a 3rd of a ton of cooled liquid xenon in a titanium beat out, surrounded by powerful sensors designed to detect the photons and electrical charges emitted if a WIMP should manage to collide with a xenon atom. The whole shebang is shielded from cosmic rays past a 72,000-gallon tank of loftier-purity h2o and a mile of stone; it's located in the former Homestake Gold Mine in Atomic number 82, South Dakota. It ended up being an even ameliorate detector than predictable, partly considering the team had to work so hard to isolate the baseline of impostor particle interactions that their baseline error filtration got really proficient. Only, since they got then expert at picking out the baseline, they can say with certainty that the baseline is all they observed. They did not encounter nighttime matter interactions.

In their argument, the LUX collaboration pointed out that while they had eliminated "large swathes" of possible mass ranges and interactions associated with WIMPs, the WIMP model itself "remains live and viable." Constraints don't invalidate the model. Data you lot didn't anticipate is still data.

Now information technology's a matter of fourth dimension: The adjacent data on dark matter might come from CERN, or it might come from LUX'due south successor, LUX-ZEPLIN, which will exist 70 times as sensitive, taking LUX's place in the mine. Compared with LUX's one-3rd-ton of liquid xenon, LZ will have a 10-ton liquid xenon target, which volition fit inside the same 72,000-gallon tank of pure water used by LUX to help fend off external radiation.

"The innovations of the LUX experiment form the foundation for the LZ experiment," said Harry Nelson of UCSB, spokesperson for that projection. "We look LZ to achieve 70 times the sensitivity of LUX. The LZ program continues to pass its milestones, aided by the terrific support of the Sanford Lab, the DOE, and its many collaborating institutions and scientists.  LZ should exist online in 2020."

(Image credits: luxdarkmatter.org)