Deep inside an abandoned iron mine in northern Minnesota, physicists may have spotted the clearest signal yet of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that is thought to make up 90 per cent of the mass of the universe.
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) collaboration has announced that its experiment has seen tantalising glimpses of what could be dark matter.
The CDMS-II experiment operates nearly three-quarters of a kilometre underground in the Soudan mine. It is looking for so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are thought to make up dark matter.
When the CDMS-II team looked at the analysis of their latest run – after accounting for all possible background particles and any faulty detectors in their stacks – they were in for a surprise. Their statistical models predicted that they would see 0.8 events during a run between 2007 and 2008, but instead they saw two.
The team is not claiming discovery of dark matter, because the result is not statistically significant. There is a 1-in-4 chance that it is merely due to fluctuations in the background noise. Had the experiment seen five events above the expected background, the claim for having detected dark matter would have been a lot stronger.
Nonetheless, the team cannot dismiss the possibility that the two events are because of dark matter.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18303-clearest-sign-yet-of-dark-matter-detected.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-newsI think they should look in the Senate chambers for dark energy and dark matter.
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