Dark Matter

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New prototype may detect dark matter

A team of researchers from the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) and the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS, in France) has developed a "scintillating bolometer", a device that the scientists will use in efforts to detect the dark matter of the Universe, and which has been tested at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in Huesca, Spain.

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Small galaxies are embedded with dark matter

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a strong new line of evidence that galaxies are embedded in halos of dark matter.

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New MIT detector will aid dark matter search

Several research projects are underway to try to detect particles that may make up the mysterious "dark matter" believed to dominate the universe's mass. But the existing detectors have a problem: They also pick up particles of ordinary matter -- hurtling neutrons that masquerade as the elusive dark-matter particles the instruments are designed to find.

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Listening to dark matter

A team of researchers in Canada have made a bold stride in the struggle to detect dark matter. The PICASSO collaboration has documented the discovery of a significant difference between the acoustic signals induced by neutrons and alpha particles in a detector based on superheated liquids.

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Searching the heavens

A new space mission, due to launch this month, is going to shed light on some of the most extreme astrophysical processes in nature - including pulsars, remnants of supernovae, and supermassive black holes.

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Last large piece of ATLAS detector lowered underground

Today Brandeis researchers in the U.S. ATLAS collaboration joined colleagues around the world to celebrate a pivotal landmark in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the lowering of the final piece of the ATLAS particle detector into the underground collision hall at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Stanford physicist aids search for dark matter deep in Minnesota mine

A half-mile down in an old iron ore mine in Minnesota, incredibly sensitive detectors have been waiting for a particle of dark matter, an invisible substance that may form the skeleton of galaxies, to make itself known.

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Crystal bells stay silent as physicists look for dark matter

Scientists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment today announced that they have regained the lead in the worldwide race to find the particles that make up dark matter. The CDMS experiment, conducted a half-mile underground in a mine in Soudan, Minn., again sets the world’s best constraints on the properties of dark matter candidates.

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Physicists revive bubble chamber technology to search for WIMPs

Scientists working on the COUPP experiment at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory today (February 14) announced a new development in the quest to observe dark matter. The Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics experiment tightened constraints on the “spin-dependent” properties of WIMPS, weakly interacting massive particles that are candidates for dark matter.

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Scientists solve cosmological puzzle

Researchers using supercomputer simulations have exposed a very violent and critical relationship between interstellar gas and dark matter when galaxies are born – one that has been largely ignored by the current model of how the universe evolved.

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Physicist shining light on mysterious 'dark matter'

We’ve all been taught that our bodies, the Earth, and in fact all matter in the universe is composed of tiny building blocks called atoms. Now imagine if this weren’t the case. This mind-bending concept is at the core of the scientific research that one Florida State University professor -- and hundreds of his colleagues all over the world -- are pursuing.

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Dilaton could affect abundance of dark matter particles

The amount of dark matter left over from the early universe may be less than previously believed. Research published in the open access journal PMC Physics A shows that the "relic abundance" of stable dark matter particles such as the neutralino may be reduced as compared to standard cosmology theories due to the effects of the "dilaton"', a particle with zero spin in the gravitational sector of strings.

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