Growing up, Ilten wanted to be an astronaut. He keeps a signed photo of moon-walker Buzz Aldrin in his office – a present from his grandparents. He became a licensed pilot while he pursued his second passion, physics.
“It is amazing to go from an idea on paper to something where you have taken data. It’s something that, as a particle physicist, I never expected to do,” Ilten said.
The project, called CODEX-b, is an effort to hunt for elusive particles to answer new physics beyond the standard model that describes the particles and forces at work in the universe.
“We think most of the matter out there is dark matter. We have no idea what it is,” Ilten said. “None of the particles in the standard model can describe dark matter.”
So researchers are looking for possible new ones using a suite of custom particle detectors.
“The Large Hadron Collider is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Ilten said. “But with the other detectors, you always get the haystack with the needle. This detector filters almost everything out.”