Scientists may have seen more hints of the dark matter purported to make up a majority of the mass in the Universe. Researchers at the Cresst experiment in Italy say they have spotted 67 events in their detectors that may be caused by dark matter particles called Wimps. The finds must be reconciled with other experiments that have recently hinted at the detection of Wimps. The results were revealed at the Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics meeting in Germany on Tuesday. They have also been posted on the physics website Arxiv , complementing the data of other “direct detection” experiments. Dark matter was initially proposed to explain how galaxies hold together; from what we know about how gravity works, much more matter is required to hold galaxies together than we can see. Many candidates for what dark matter actually is have been proposed, but most explanations have been refuted by experiments. What seems to align best with both theory and experiment so far is a class of particles that tend not to interact with the matter we know: weakly interacting massive particles, or Wimps. Though dark matter is imagined to be everywhere, permeating the Universe and clumping around galaxies, it is estimated that some Wimps may pass through our entire Galaxy without interacting with any normal matter. Dark materials Cresst is just one laboratory dedicated to catching the flighty particles in deep underground detectors. It uses 33 lumps of a crystal called calcium tungstate. When a Wimp smashes into…more detail
