A team of international physicists
at the Gran Sasso particle physics laboratory in the Abruzzo
region on Monday inaugurated DarkSide-50, a kind of "high-tech
detective" looking for dark matter in the universe.
DarkSide-50 should allow researchers to work out what makes
up the invisible and mysterious dark matter that makes up 25% of
the known universe.
DarkSide is a cylindrical machine filled with 150 kilograms
of pure liquid argon from mineral deposits in Colorado and
covered with photomultipliers - technological "eyes" that will
try to capture the traces left behind by particles of dark
matter when they interact with the argon at the core.
Researchers at the laboratory, which is part of the
National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), began collecting
data for the DarkSide experiment last April.
The project is funded by INFN together with the United
States National Science Foundation and the US Department of
Energy.
The experiment is a large-scale collaboration between INFN
and Princeton University with participants from China, France,
Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.
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