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Excerpts from Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Gazette article: A bubbly solution for a century-old challenge

A Canadian-led collaboration of physics researchers is getting ready to deploy a new dark matter detector deep underground in Sudbury, Ontario. The assembly, which includes the building of an enormous 17,000-kilogram vessel, is expected to be completed this December. Data collection should start a few months later, once the equipment calibration and tests have been completed.

The new experiment, named PICO-500, builds on decades of research and three previous iterations of this type of detector, known as a bubble chamber. PICO-500 is the largest and most sensitive yet.

Â鶹¹ÙÍø’s lead researcher for the PICO collaboration and scientific director of the, Anthony Noble (Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy) says PICO-500 is a unique experiment, and the best in the world to detect spin-dependent interactions – one of the ways dark matter may interact with regular matter.

Dark matter is the key piece of a sophisticated theory explaining how our universe became what it is, including why galaxies move the way they do and why light from distant galaxies bends as if pulled by invisible mass. It is also one of science’s greatest mysteries: for a century, researchers have been trying to observe dark matter using ingenious detectors, out-of-this-world telescopes, and even attempting to produce dark matter within cutting-edge particle accelerators. There is unequivocal evidence for dark matter, which is known to comprise about 85 per cent of all matter in the Universe, but we have no idea what it is. With each new piece of equipment with ever increasing sensitivity, scientists hope to get closer to finally seeing it.

Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Gazette full article