Scientists are going to hunt for dark matter at the bottom of a gold mine

[Judi Lynn]

Move over, Large Hadron Collider.

ANTHONY WILLIAMS, THE CONVERSATION
22 DEC 2016


Dark matter is believed to be five times more prevalent in the universe than ordinary matter. But it interacts so weakly with other matter - like the protons and electrons that make up the stuff around us - that, to date, it has defied our attempts to detect it directly.

It doesn’t even interact with light, which is why we call it dark matter. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to detect. We can search for dark matter in a number of ways.

We can try to produce dark matter using high-energy particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

We can also look into regions of space where dark matter is concentrated, such as at the centres of galaxies, for signs of dark matter decaying into ordinary matter.

More:
http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-about-to-start-searching-for-dark-matter-at-the-bottom-of-a-gold-mine