Dark matter experiment CDMS sees three tentative clues

[Crisp]

Dark matter experiment CDMS sees three tentative clues

The CDMS experiment is based underground at the Soudan mine in Minnesota, US

Researchers have revealed the first potential hints of the elusive material called dark matter at an underground laboratory in the US.

Though it is believed to make up a quarter of our Universe, dark matter - true to its name - has never been seen.

Scientists at the American Physical Society meeting showed three promising clues to it from the CDMS experiment.

However, they stressed the preliminary nature of the results and that more data are needed to confirm it.

Physics has a well-defined threshold for claiming that a new particle has been discovered, and this result still falls far short of that.

Nevertheless, given the feverish pitch of the hunt for dark matter - in other underground labs, at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and even in space - these three early hints have caused a stir at the meeting.

"It's certainly something we want to be investigating," CDMS collaborator Blas Cabrera of Stanford University told BBC News.

"This is science, and the further tightening up of what we see - or excluding it - is very important for us to do."

Source and more

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

Interesting stuff. It blows my mind how advanced the tests for this kind of thing are.