In late October SuperCDMS scientists cooled their dilution refrigerator down to 5.3 millikelvin, only a few thousandths of a kelvin above absolute zero.
Astrophysicist Risa Wechsler explores why dark matter may be the key to understanding how the universe formed, and shares how physicists in labs around the world are coming up with creative ways to study it.
Filled with rare, low-radioactivity material, the DarkSide-50 experiment will have some of the lowest background rates of any dark-matter detector. That should help it detect highly sought-after dark-matter candidates called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.
Researchers at Berkeley Lab have measured the quality of beam produced by a plasma accelerator, revealing that this novel type of accelerator may be better suited for light-source science than previously thought.
If you could detect a bowling ball’s gravitational waves, you would know when someone threw the ball—even if you were standing outside the bowling alley.
A growing suite of computational instruments is helping scientists determine how fast local concentrations of dark matter move, which in turn could help them cut in on the dance of dark matter particles.