Hubble Space Telescope Image - Credit: NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute
What does a Canadian mine more than a mile underground have to do with dark matter in the universe?
This month, scientists are putting in place a bubble chamber in the Canadian mine – part of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Ontario, Canada. Scientists anticipate that dark matter particles will leave bubbles in their tracks when passing through the liquid in the chamber.
Dark matter accounts for nearly 90 percent of all matter in the universe. Although invisible to telescopes, scientists can observe the gravitational influence that dark matter exerts over galaxies.
Called SNOLab, the undertaking is the most ambitious in a series of underground locations where scientists are on the search for dark matter. As the first bubble chamber being sent off to the subsurface SNOLab, it’s expected that the low level of interference from cosmic rays there will make the search for dark matter far more sensitive.
A second, heavier chamber will follow later this year.
“SNOLab is a very special, spectacular place, because the infrastructure that the Canadians have developed down there is nothing short of amazing,” said physicist Juan Collar Collar, Associate Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago. Even though SNOLab sits atop a working nickel mine, conditions there are pristinely antiseptic, he added in a press statement.
Collar estimates that it’ll take a decade or more for physicists to become completely convinced that they’ve seen dark-matter particles.
“It’s going to take a lot of information from very many different points of view and entirely independent techniques,” Collar said. “One day we’ll figure it out.”
Check out this video of University of Chicago physicist Juan Collar discussing the search for dark matter. Go to:
http://mindonline.uchicago.edu/media/news/juan_collar_100429_512k.mov
By LD/CSE