This article was taken from the October 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This device is the DarkSide-50 detector, a tool for an international experiment that is scheduled to switch on in December 2012. DarkSide will test for the existence of dark matter -- a postulated form of matter that is invisible, and is thought to make up about a quarter of the universe's mass.
The device will be filled with 50kg of liquid argon, and will be one of the most sensitive dark-matter detectors in the world. DarkSide is one of 15 physics experiments being performed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS) -- a sprawling underground playground for particle physicists. This 180,000-cubic-metre space, located roughly 120km north-east of Rome, houses 900 scientists. The detector is the lab's newest experiment tool.
Another LNGS project is the GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment, of which the first results are expected later this year. The GERDA team is vying to observe a rare process that could rewrite the rules of physics -- a type of radioactive decay named neutrinoless double-beta decay that occurs naturally once in ten trillion, trillion years.
Nuclear physicist Hans Klapdor-Kleingrothaus first claimed to have seen it during the Gran Sasso-based Heidelberg-Moscow experiment in 2001. Although he says he observed the phenomenon 11 times, there is still no independent confirmation from other experiments, mainly because their detectors are not sensitive enough. "The mere existence of this type of decay would require an entirely new theory of particle physics," says Klapdor-Kleingrothaus. "That's why everyone is trying so hard to observe it." Blink and you'll miss it.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
