Physicists detect mysterious signal that could be a dark matter particle

The LUX-Zamplin (LZ) experiment, located in an underground laboratory in South Dakota, USA, has recorded an event that has sparked great interest in the scientific world. Scientists may have found the first direct trace of a potential dark matter particle, although researchers are currently making very cautious statements. This was reported by the publication ixbt.com. This is reported by news reports.

This result was officially presented on September 1 at the TeV Particle Astrophysics conference held in Tendo, Japan. The statistical significance of the recorded signal is 2.6 sigma. This is significantly lower than the 5 sigma threshold required to declare an official discovery in the world of physics.

Specific aspects of the experiment

The LZ detector is installed in the Sanford Underground Research Facility, 1.5 kilometers below the surface. This immense thickness of rock reliably protects the device from cosmic rays. Inside the detector, 10 tons of ultra-pure liquid xenon are stored, and when particles collide with its nucleus, they create a small flash of light.

Researchers conducted a deep analysis of 220 days of observation data collected from March 2023 to April 2024. While typical searches are limited to energies below 50 keV, this time the range was expanded to 270 keV. During the data analysis process, scientists tried to rule out all artificial errors, and as a result, a single unexplained signal was identified.

WIMP particles and future plans

The detected collision energy was 248 keV. If this signal truly belongs to dark matter, then it refers to WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which scientists have been searching for for decades.

It is known that dark matter is a mysterious substance that holds all galaxies in the universe together and makes up about 85 percent of the universe's mass. According to Rick Gaitskell, a scientist at Brown University and a representative of the LZ collaboration, researchers are not firmly asserting that this is dark matter, but an interesting finding has been recorded that they wanted to share with the scientific community.

Similar experiments at other major scientific centers around the world, including Gran Sasso in Italy and Jinping in China, have not yet yielded such a result. The LZ collaboration, which currently unites 250 scientists and engineers, is continuing its work. If this signal is repeated in the future, it will undoubtedly become one of the greatest scientific achievements of recent years.