The Particle Nobody Can Explain
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Scientists May Have Caught the First Direct Glimpse of Dark Matter Deep Underground Nearly a mile beneath South Dakota, an experiment built to detect some of the most elusive particles in the universe has recorded one collision scientists cannot comfortably explain. The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment, known as LZ, found a high-energy nuclear recoil inside its liquid-xenon detector that could have been produced by a dark matter particle — potentially giving humanity its first direct laboratory glimpse of the substance thought to dominate the matter in the universe. It is not a discovery yet. The LZ collaboration is explicitly refusing to claim that it has detected dark matter because the statistical evidence remains below the standard demanded in particle physics. But after years of hunting for mundane explanations, researchers say the single event remains unusually difficult to account for using known backgrounds, making it the most compelling dark-matter hint LZ has reported so far.
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