THE CRUX
THE LATEST SCIENCE NEWS AND NOTES
April 2018^ DISCOVER^9GUTS OF A DARK MATTER DETECTOR
Physicists are pretty sure dark matter suffuses the universe, but they’re having trouble detecting any of it directly. The latest effort involves
the XENON1T instrument, which ended a 34-day run deep inside an Italian mountain in January 2017. This view reveals the machine’s
inner workings, housed within a stainless steel tank about 33 feet wide. A central tank stores more than 3 tons of ultra-pure liquid xenon,
which should react with dark matter and produce dim flashes of light. But even though XENON1T is the most sensitive detector of its type
ever built, it didn’t see any dark matter reactions. The search continues. ERNIE MASTROIANNI; PHOTO BY ENRICO SACCHETTI