Despite Ten-fold Increase in Sensitivity, LUX Fails to Detect Dark Matter
Dark matter is thought to account for about 80 percent of the mass of the universe. Though it has not yet been detected directly, its existence is a near certainty among physicists. Without the gravitational influence of dark matter, galaxies and galaxy clusters would simply fly apart into the vastness of space. It's not clear exactly what dark matter is, but the leading idea is that it consists of subatomic particles called WIMPs, short for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. WIMPs are thought to be practically ubiquitous in the universe, but because they interact so rarely with other forms of matter, they generally pass right through the Earth and everything in it without anyone knowing it. A new calibration of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) Dark Matter Detector brought a ten-fold increase in calibration accuracy, yet failed to detect dark matter. If low-mass WIMP particles had passed through the detector, LUX would have found them.
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