The search for dark matter U. S. experiment takes the lead in
the competitive race to find dark matter. February 27, 2008
Provided by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
February 27, 2008 This image shows a closeup of a CDMS detector,
made of crystal germanium. Photo by Fermilab Scientists of the
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment, including
researchers from the California Institute of Technology, have
announced that they have regained the lead in the worldwide race
by a number of different research groups to find the particles
that make up dark matter. The CDMS experiment, which is being
conducted a half-mile underground in a mine in Soudan,
Minnesota, again sets the world's best constraints on the
properties of dark matter candidates. Weakly interacting massive
particles, or WIMPs, are leading candidates for the building
blocks of dark matter, the as-yet-unknown form of matter that
accounts for 85 percent of the entire mass of the universe.
Hundreds of billions of WIMPs may have pas