New approaches to understanding the universe undergo Coimbra - TVI24

international experience, which includes six researchers from Coimbra, reached “a sensitivity to particles, believed to constitute dark matter, two times better” than any other test, today announced the University of Coimbra.

“The dark matter [so called not emit or absorb any type of radiation] is essential to explain the universe, and it is expected to account for over 80% of its mass,” explains the institution.

Research Large Underground Xenon (LUX) is “the world’s most sensitive experiment for the detection of dark matter, reaching a sensitivity to particles thought to constitute the dark matter (Wimps) twice better than any other experience already held ‘ says, in a note released today, the University of Coimbra (UC).

Wimps is the acronym for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, designating that results to be extremely reduced the probability of those particles interact directly with the matter we call normal (non-dark), which makes their detection particularly difficult in technological terms.

The first results of the experience resulting from the collaboration of 17 research groups from universities and laboratories in the United States , the UK and Portugal, “announced recently from Sanford Underground Research Facility, Lead, South Dakota” (USA), where the experience is installed since 2012, indicate precisely that sense, underlines the UC.

were “awaited with great expectation ‘as revealed’ the recent news of the prestigious journal Nature,” says the same note.

Experience LUX collected for three months, data the observations of the signals due to interactions between dark matter and normal matter, using “the largest detector ever built for this purpose, installed in the underground laboratory of Sanford,” about 1,500 feet deep.

A LUX uses a detector 350 kg of liquified xenon at a negative temperature of 100 degrees centigrade, and installed such that depth is not receiving ‘the great majority of cosmic rays “, which are absorbed by the rock.

This circumstance makes the probability of the rays arriving at the detector to be “ten million times lower than the surface, not disturbing thus the observation of signs of interaction of the xenon with Wimps detector”, explain the specialists Coimbra involved in the investigation.

The participation of six researchers from the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics and Department of Physics at UC LUX is’ fundamental ‘in project’ both engineering (being responsible for subsystems associated with the detector and having been involved in all stages of installation in underground laboratory) as the analysis and processing of data, “says UC.

The LUX will soon start a new search period dark matter with this detector with an expected duration of one year.

However, ‘are already underway preparations for the construction of a new detector to succeed LUX, using the same technology. Housed in the same laboratory, but with a mass of xenon seven tons and a sensitivity about 200 times better, ‘says UC.