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Article: Darkness made visible.(dark matter particles,)
- Article from:
- U.S. News & World Report
- Article date:
- March 27, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 All rights reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This is how the universe might show its dark side: Half a mile down in an abandoned iron mine in northern Minnesota, an ultracold crystal detector picks up a tiny pulse of heat--a sign that some heavy particle has slammed into one of its atoms. Other instruments show nothing-- suggesting that the intruder is not a particle of matter as we know it. The Minnesota moment is one of a handful of similar events that have occurred in recent months, and now, some researchers say, the odds are slim that the signals are just the result of detector glitches or ordinary particles that slipped through the net. If that's true, the only remaining culprit would be particles of dark ...