The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.
If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe’s mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That’s why any news of a sighting is seized upon.
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment is one of several designed to look for the tell-tale signature of dark matter particles passing through. No one is sure what a dark matter particle will look like, though theory gives some pointers.
Most of the experiments have been designed to look for elusive massive particles called WIMPS that barely register as they pass through matter, because the only forces they experience are gravity and the weak nuclear force.
CDMS is located deep underground in the Soudan mine in Minnesota, to protect it from the hail of cosmic rays that would otherwise wash out any dark matter signal.
Earlier this year, the collaboration published a paper in Physical Review Letters (vol 102, p011301) based on two series of experiments between October 2006 and July 2007. They found nothing.
So researchers have been waiting eagerly for the next chapter of the story – maybe with more time, more experience running their detector and a sprinkling of luck, the team would spot a dark matter particle.
The gossip mill went into overdrive after a rumour leaked out that the CDMS collaboration has had a paper accepted by the journal Nature. Word is that the paper will appear in the 18 December issue.
Nature is an unusual place for particle physicists to publish their papers and this has prompted speculation that the news must be big.
A few physicists I know say that talks have hurriedly been scheduled for 18 December at SLAC National Laboratory, the University of California Santa Barbara and Fermilab – all prominent institutions within the CDMS collaboration.
We’ll have to wait and see if the rumours turn out to be true. Even if not, with NASA’s Fermi satellite looking for dark matter in space and the Large Hadron Collider up and running, 2010 could be the year we finally crack the dark matter mystery.
Via: New Scientist
