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Written by Wendy Pitlick
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Thursday, 17 December 2009 |
LEAD If operations at the Sanford Lab have to be suspended for any period of time due to a lack of funding, that will stop the search for dark matter within the former gold mine, said Dr. Rick Gaitskell, lead physicist for the largest dark matter experiment at the lab and the deepest experiment in the world.
“If the lab is forced to go under any kind of suspension that will stop the science absolutely dead,” Gaitskell said after introducing his experiment that he is assembling on the surface of the lab before deploying it to the 4,850-foot level next summer. Gaitskell is the principal investigator for the LUX (Large Underground Xenon) detector, which will use a massive tank of liquid xenon and other specialty equipment to directly detect dark matter particles that scientists say make up more than 90 percent of the universe. Scientists around the world have deemed the search for dark matter particles as one of the top questions to be answered in the 21st century.
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