Space News: What is dark matter? And have scientists found it?

For two years, the team has been using one of the world’s most sensitive dark matter detectors.

It’s basically a big tank filled with a really dense liquid.

We spoke to Professor of Astrophysics Matt Nicholl to try and help explain this a bit more. He said to picture the tank of liquid like a giant snooker table.

And all the time there are particles, like snooker balls, passing from one end to the other, and usually they don’t hit each other.

But every so often they do!

And the heavier the snooker ball, the bigger the bump would be if it hit another one.

He explained that it’s like the scientists “have found one of their snooker balls got hit by a bigger ball”.

And the one they saw has roughly the same mass as gold, but usually things from space are a LOT lighter.

So it seems likely that it’s a particle we don’t know about which COULD be dark matter.