2008 Woodie Awards
The Daily OrangeLost in the dark
One SU professor joins a federal research team to discover undetected dark matter
By Brian Goetsch
Posted: 3/25/08, 12:50 AM EST Section: News
Half a mile down a once-abandoned ore mine in Minnesota, several scientists, along with thousands of microscopic sensors, have been waiting for a trace of dark matter to make an appearance. Syracuse University professor Richard Schnee is one of these scientists.
The assistant professor of physics at SU was recently appointed science coordinator for the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment.
He, along with more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions, are at the forefront of an international competition to become the first to actually detect a particle of dark matter, according to an SU News press release. The project is being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
"Dark matter accounts for about 80 percent of the universe," Schnee said. "It's extremely hard to detect. In fact, billions of these particles pass unnoticed through our bodies every second."
Schnee is coordinating the project in which scientists installed crystal germanium detectors into the Soudan Underground Laboratory, north of Duluth, Minnesota. These sensors are intended to detect dark particles, known as weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs. The WIMPs are what the scientists are expecting to discover.
According to ScienceDaily, an online magazine devoted to science and technology, the plan was for several WIMPs to travel through space and a half-mile into the Earth and land into the nuclei of germanium atoms in the sensors, each collision creating a vibration along with an incredibly small amount of heat. This would signal the WIMP's existence.
"These sensors are known as superconducting transition-edge sensors," Schnee said. "The point is for the nuclei to vibrate and essentially heat up, causing a decrease in current. This change in current tells us if there is a particle interaction, but a specific change in current is what we're looking for in terms of discovering a WIMP."
But the sensors in the laboratory, chilled to within four-hundredths of a degree above absolute zero, have recorded no evidence of WIMPs. Still, Schnee and others say it's only a matter of time before a WIMP is recorded.
The assistant professor of physics at SU was recently appointed science coordinator for the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment.
He, along with more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions, are at the forefront of an international competition to become the first to actually detect a particle of dark matter, according to an SU News press release. The project is being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
"Dark matter accounts for about 80 percent of the universe," Schnee said. "It's extremely hard to detect. In fact, billions of these particles pass unnoticed through our bodies every second."
Schnee is coordinating the project in which scientists installed crystal germanium detectors into the Soudan Underground Laboratory, north of Duluth, Minnesota. These sensors are intended to detect dark particles, known as weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPs. The WIMPs are what the scientists are expecting to discover.
According to ScienceDaily, an online magazine devoted to science and technology, the plan was for several WIMPs to travel through space and a half-mile into the Earth and land into the nuclei of germanium atoms in the sensors, each collision creating a vibration along with an incredibly small amount of heat. This would signal the WIMP's existence.
"These sensors are known as superconducting transition-edge sensors," Schnee said. "The point is for the nuclei to vibrate and essentially heat up, causing a decrease in current. This change in current tells us if there is a particle interaction, but a specific change in current is what we're looking for in terms of discovering a WIMP."
But the sensors in the laboratory, chilled to within four-hundredths of a degree above absolute zero, have recorded no evidence of WIMPs. Still, Schnee and others say it's only a matter of time before a WIMP is recorded.
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