Scientists searching for dark matter have detected a particle interaction that could be one of the strongest clues yet to the nature of the invisible material, although researchers stress that the finding does not amount to a discovery.<\/p>\n
The unusual event was recorded by the LUX-ZEPLIN, or LZ, experiment almost a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota.<\/p>\n
LZ uses about 10 tonnes of ultrapure liquid xenon to search for weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, one of the leading theoretical candidates for dark matter. Researchers recorded a single interaction that has so far proved difficult to explain using known background processes.<\/p>\n
The LZ collaboration reported a global statistical significance of 2.6 sigma after accounting for the \u201clook-elsewhere\u201d effect \u2014 well below the level required to claim a discovery.<\/p>\n
Dark matter is thought to account for roughly 85% of the universe\u2019s matter. It cannot be seen directly but is inferred from its gravitational influence on galaxies and other cosmic structures.<\/p>\n
Researchers will continue collecting data to determine whether the signal strengthens or disappears as more observations are made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists searching for dark matter have detected a particle interaction that could be one of the strongest clues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[285703,181436,285707,18,19,17,285708,281715,285704,5474,285706,133,285705],"class_list":["post-675665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-dark-matter-breakthrough","tag-dark-matter-detection","tag-dark-matter-signal","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-liquid-xenon-detector","tag-lux-zeplin","tag-lz-experiment","tag-particle-physics","tag-sanford-underground-research-facility","tag-science","tag-wimp-dark-matter"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117225432497899982","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}