Did scientists just find a dark matter particle? Maybe

The LUX-ZEPLIN detector picked up a strange signal that scientists haven’t cracked yet. Could it be a dark matter interaction?

There’s a flashy new find in the hunt for dark matter—the stuff that makes up 85% of all matter in the universe, but we have no clue what it is.

A mile under Lead, South Dakota, is a giant cauldron filled with 7 tons of liquid xenon, encased in water and surrounded by super-sensitive photodetectors. Known as the LZ detector, its job is to look for flashes of light that come from particles bumping into xenon atoms. And during its observations, the researchers saw a very weird flash—a bump that doesn’t look like it came from any particle we know of.

Flora talks with physicist Richard Gaitskell about the hunt for a dark matter particle and why he’s excited about this weird little finding. 

Guest:

Dr. Richard Jeremy Gaitskell is a physicist at Brown University and a leading scientist in the search for particle dark matter. He is a co-founder of the Large Underground Xenon experiment.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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