Researchers in the UK have taken a significant step towards understanding dark matter, making up about 85% of the universe’s mass. They are building “the world’s largest and most advanced rare-particle detector” to search for dark matter particles and other elusive physics phenomena.
The new instrument will be ten times larger than the current leading experiment, known as the LZ experiment. This increase in size will significantly enhance the detector’s sensitivity, allowing it to detect a wider range of potential dark matter particles. The detector will be an extensive underground structure holding up to 100 tons of liquid xenon, where interactions between dark matter particles and ordinary matter are expected to produce tiny flashes of light.
The project is being led by Imperial College London in collaboration with the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Boulby Underground Laboratory. Professor Sean Paling, Director and Senior Scientist at the laboratory, believes that discovering or ruling out the existence of dark matter will be an enormous leap for science, transforming our understanding of the cosmos.
The exact location for the experiment is not determined yet, but UK universities and the Boulby Underground Laboratory are laying the foundation. A team at STFC is working on a new underground science facility at Boulby mine, which might host the XLZD detector.
Source: https://interestingengineering.com/science/worlds-largest-most-advanced-dark-matter-detector