The greatest scientific mystery of our time may have just flashed in a gold mine - SMH
smh.com.au
A pool of xenon in a gold mine may have just caught a flicker of dark matter — the substance thought to make up most of the universe's mass.
Dark Matter TheoryStandard Model of Particle PhysicsSignal Detection TheoryWeakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs)
Theory Briefing
- A xenon pool buried in a gold mine is one of the quietest, most stable places on Earth — built to catch a single dark matter particle at the right angle.
- Dark matter is theorized to make up most of the universe's mass, yet has never been directly detected — this experiment may have changed that.
- The extreme stillness of the xenon detector is the key: any faint signal stands out precisely because almost nothing else can disturb it.
- A potential flash in the detector would be the first direct physical evidence of dark matter, rewriting fundamental physics.