Starship Asterisk*

First magnet installed for the ALPS II experiment at DESY

The international ALPS II (“Any light particle search”) collaboration installed the first of 24 superconducting magnets today, marking the start of the installation of a unique particle physics experiment to look for dark matter. Located at the German research centre DESY in Hamburg, it is set to start taking data in 2021 by looking for dark matter particles that literally make light shine through a wall, thus providing clues to one of the biggest questions in physics today: what is the nature of dark matter? ...

The central component of LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) – the largest direct-detection dark matter experiment in the US – has been slowly lowered 4,850 feet down a shaft formerly used in gold-mining operations by a team involving UCL physicists.

Although dark matter accounts for about 27 percent of the universe, we do not know what it is made of and experiments have yet to make direct contact with a particle – it has only been detected through its gravitational effects on normal matter.

Once operational next year, the LZ aims to change this by hunting theorised dark matter particles called WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. It is 100 times more sensitive than its predecessor experiment, called LUX, which operated in the same underground space.