Symmetry

Meet the kaon

Nearly 75 years after the puzzling first detection of the kaon, scientists are still looking to the particle for hints of physics beyond their current understanding.

Department of Energy officials have formally signed off on project completion for LUX-ZEPLIN, or LZ: an ultrasensitive experiment that will use 10 metric tons of liquid xenon to hunt for signals of interactions with theorized dark matter particles called WIMPs.

Visualizing dark matter is not an easy task. Although scientists have reason to believe the mysterious substance makes up about 27% of all the matter and energy in the universe, they still have yet to see it directly; they know it exists only because of its gravitational pull on the visible matter around it. An art exhibit at the Science Gallery Dublin combines art and science to illuminate the invisible nature of dark matter.

Next week, scientists with connections to U.S. particle physics will make their morning coffee, boot up their computers and log in to a virtual community planning meeting with over 1,500 colleagues. The four-day gathering will set the stage for a process known as Snowmass, during which scientists will develop a collective vision for the next decade of U.S. particle physics research. The Snowmass process seeks to identify the most promising questions to explore in future research.