The Quest for Dark Matter: New Experiment May Detect Elusive Particles in Weeks
125 scientists from the XENON dark matter research project will monitor 3.5 tons of liquid xenon in order to try and detect dark matter. It is hoped that the new detector will find dark matter after just a few weeks of operation.
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CrazyNeutrino said:
The Quest for Dark Matter: New Experiment May Detect Elusive Particles in Weeks125 scientists from the XENON dark matter research project will monitor 3.5 tons of liquid xenon in order to try and detect dark matter. It is hoped that the new detector will find dark matter after just a few weeks of operation.
more…
I must be wrong then. I thought the XENON dark matter search had been in operation for some time. I first heard about it in 2012.
mollwollfumble said:
CrazyNeutrino said:
The Quest for Dark Matter: New Experiment May Detect Elusive Particles in Weeks125 scientists from the XENON dark matter research project will monitor 3.5 tons of liquid xenon in order to try and detect dark matter. It is hoped that the new detector will find dark matter after just a few weeks of operation.
more…
I must be wrong then. I thought the XENON dark matter search had been in operation for some time. I first heard about it in 2012.
“The XENON10 experiment was installed at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy during March 2006.”
Ah, I see, the XENON10 project has been in operation for some time, then it was upgraded and renamed the XENON100 project.
“The XENON100 detector uses the same principle of operation and many design features successfully tested in the XENON10 prototype. It is a position-sensitive XeTPC, with the sensitive LXe volume viewed by two arrays of total 178 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), to detect simultaneously the primary scintillation signal (S1) and the ionization signal via the proportional scintillation mechanism (S2). The active target is enclosed in a PTFE cylinder of 15 cm radius and 30 cm height. The XENON100 detector was installed at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in 2008 in the same shield as the XENON10 detector, and has conducted several science runs. In each science run, no dark matter signal was observed above the expected background, leading to the most stringent limit on the spin independent WIMP-nucleon cross section in 2012.”
So the XENON100 project has also been in operation for some time. What’s next?
“Construction of the next phase, XENON1T, started in Hall B of the Gran Sasso national Laboratory in 2014. The detector is designed to contain 3.5 tons of ultra radio-pure liquid Xenon, and will have a fiducial volume in excess of 1 ton. The detector is housed in a 10 m water tank that will serve as a muon veto. The predicted sensitivity at 50 GeV/C 2 is 2.0 × 10 −47 cm 2. This is 100x better than the current limit published for XENON100.”
CrazyNeutrino said:
The Quest for Dark Matter: New Experiment May Detect Elusive Particles in Weeks125 scientists from the XENON dark matter research project will monitor 3.5 tons of liquid xenon in order to try and detect dark matter. It is hoped that the new detector will find dark matter after just a few weeks of operation.
more…
> If successful, XENON1T will, however, not be able to claim its discovery of dark matter, which is currently entitled to the DAMA collaboration.
I disagree. The DAMA results are highly disputed, and have been for a long time. If XENON1T does find dark matter then it will with better than 99% probability prove that DAMA detected nothing other than a statistical fluctuation.