{"id":834909,"date":"2026-09-03T06:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/834909\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T06:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:40:10","slug":"did-scientists-just-catch-a-glimpse-of-a-dark-matter-particle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/834909\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Scientists Just Catch a Glimpse of a Dark Matter Particle?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhile we\u2019re excited, we also need to be\u00a0cautious,\u201d says Daniel Akerib<\/a>, a particle physicist at Stanford University, and one of the cornucopia of experts involved with the new research.<\/p>\n

Other experiments have hinted at the possibility of dark matter particle candidates in the past, but those ultimately fell through. To verify the WIMP signal, researchers will need more data. \u201cThis is a tantalizing anomaly, not evidence,\u201d says Chamkaur Ghag<\/a>, a physicist at University College London and another of the team\u2019s researchers. But if scientists spot more of these odd collisions, a nearly century-long quest to unveil the true nature of dark matter may finally come to an end.<\/p>\n

\"Members<\/p>\n

The detector, called\u00a0LUX-ZEPLIN or LZ (shown during its installation), that picked up this possible dark matter signal is wrapped in layers of shielding to minimize background noise.<\/p>\n

Matthew Kapust\/Sanford Underground Research Facility<\/p>\n

The Shadowy Puzzle of Dark Matter<\/p>\n

To us, it seems like ordinary matter rules the universe. But dark matter<\/a>\u2014first inferred as an unseen mass in the 1930s, then suspected of being an unusual particle in the 1970s\u2014makes up 85 percent of all the universe\u2019s matter. This is based on plentiful observations of the visible universe, and an assessment of the gravitational forces that appear to be shaping its galaxies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that dark matter exists,\u201d says Daniel Whiteson<\/a>, a particle physicist at the University of California Irvine. \u201cThere are many independent lines of evidence for it.\u201d Stars wouldn\u2019t ignite under the influence of ordinary matter and its gravity alone. Spinning galaxies would be torn apart without its force. Light is bent around hidden halos in space\u2014a process known as gravitational lensing<\/a>\u2014that only makes sense if copious amounts of dark matter is present.<\/p>\n

\u201cCosmologists have a hard time building a universe\u2014ok, a model of the universe\u2014without dark matter,\u201d says Akerib. \u201cBut what is it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhile we\u2019re excited, we also need to be\u00a0cautious,\u201d says Daniel Akerib, a particle physicist at Stanford University, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[10239,112821,353380,13635,199,8123,79,56627,74414,353381],"class_list":["post-834909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-dark-matter","tag-lux-zeplin","tag-lz","tag-particle","tag-physics","tag-sanford-underground-research-facility","tag-science","tag-weakly-interacting-massive-particles","tag-wimps","tag-xenon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}