Andrew Yee[_1_]
April 25th 08, 04:31 PM
News Service
University of California-Davis
Media contact(s):
Robert Svoboda, Physics, (530) 754-9610
Mani Tripathi, Physics, (530) 752-8785
Andy Fell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-4533
April 23, 2008
Mining for Dark Matter
While much of the attention in the world of high-energy physics is focused
on the Large Hadron Collider nearing completion at the European Center for
Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland, other physicists,
including some from UC Davis, are working on a much lower-budget experiment
that will sit in an abandoned South Dakota goldmine.
The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy recently
approved $1.2 million in funding for the LUX (Large Underground Xenon)
detector, about half the cost of the project. LUX will look for evidence of
particles of dark matter, thought to make up a quarter of the content of the
universe.
"LUX is not so much rocket science as about being very careful," said Robert
Svoboda, a physics professor at UC Davis who with Professor Mani Tripathi is
a co-investigator on the project. "We're dealing with very low energies
where events are very hard to see."
The detector will consist of about 600 pounds of liquid xenon suspended in a
25-foot-high tank of extremely pure water, located 4,800 feet underground in
the Homestake mine near Lead, S.D. If dark matter particles called WIMPs
(weakly interacting massive particles) exist, then they should occasionally
bump into the nucleus of a xenon atom and give off a flash of light.
For physicists, detecting dark matter "would be the biggest deal since
finding antimatter in the 1930s," Tripathi said.
The deep-mine location and the water tank are designed to block radiation
that would interfere with detecting the rare, low-energy events. The
researchers are testing everything down to the epoxy glue to remove the
smallest traces of radiation.
"This will be one of the least radioactive places on Earth," Svoboda said.
The mine closed in 2000. In 2004, the state legislature created the South
Dakota Science and Technology Authority to develop the mine as an
underground laboratory, and in 2007 the National Science Foundation selected
the mine as the site for a national Deep Underground Science and Engineering
Laboratory (DUSEL). LUX will be the first major experiment installed at the
site.
Water is currently being pumped out of the mine, and the researchers hope to
begin assembling the experiment in late summer or fall this year.
Other funds are being provided by the state of South Dakota and from the
institutions collaborating on the experiment, which include Case Western
Reserve University, Brown University, the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence
Berkeley national laboratories, the University of Maryland, Texas A&M, and
the University of Rochester.
University of California-Davis
Media contact(s):
Robert Svoboda, Physics, (530) 754-9610
Mani Tripathi, Physics, (530) 752-8785
Andy Fell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-4533
April 23, 2008
Mining for Dark Matter
While much of the attention in the world of high-energy physics is focused
on the Large Hadron Collider nearing completion at the European Center for
Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland, other physicists,
including some from UC Davis, are working on a much lower-budget experiment
that will sit in an abandoned South Dakota goldmine.
The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy recently
approved $1.2 million in funding for the LUX (Large Underground Xenon)
detector, about half the cost of the project. LUX will look for evidence of
particles of dark matter, thought to make up a quarter of the content of the
universe.
"LUX is not so much rocket science as about being very careful," said Robert
Svoboda, a physics professor at UC Davis who with Professor Mani Tripathi is
a co-investigator on the project. "We're dealing with very low energies
where events are very hard to see."
The detector will consist of about 600 pounds of liquid xenon suspended in a
25-foot-high tank of extremely pure water, located 4,800 feet underground in
the Homestake mine near Lead, S.D. If dark matter particles called WIMPs
(weakly interacting massive particles) exist, then they should occasionally
bump into the nucleus of a xenon atom and give off a flash of light.
For physicists, detecting dark matter "would be the biggest deal since
finding antimatter in the 1930s," Tripathi said.
The deep-mine location and the water tank are designed to block radiation
that would interfere with detecting the rare, low-energy events. The
researchers are testing everything down to the epoxy glue to remove the
smallest traces of radiation.
"This will be one of the least radioactive places on Earth," Svoboda said.
The mine closed in 2000. In 2004, the state legislature created the South
Dakota Science and Technology Authority to develop the mine as an
underground laboratory, and in 2007 the National Science Foundation selected
the mine as the site for a national Deep Underground Science and Engineering
Laboratory (DUSEL). LUX will be the first major experiment installed at the
site.
Water is currently being pumped out of the mine, and the researchers hope to
begin assembling the experiment in late summer or fall this year.
Other funds are being provided by the state of South Dakota and from the
institutions collaborating on the experiment, which include Case Western
Reserve University, Brown University, the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence
Berkeley national laboratories, the University of Maryland, Texas A&M, and
the University of Rochester.