Creating a hypersensitive dark matter detector in a clean lab more than a mile underground is no mean feat in and of itself. Add a closed border and COVID restrictions to the mix, and you have the scenario that Fermilab, SNOLAB and the SENSEI collaboration faced. Undeterred, they found a way to proceed with installation.
In Drift: Art and Dark Matter, pieces by four artists-in-residence dig deep into the underground laboratory.
Physicists often find thrifty, ingenious ways to reuse equipment and resources. What do you do about an 800-ton magnet originally used to discover new particles? Send it off on a months-long journey via truck, train and ship halfway across the world to detect oscillating particles called neutrinos, of course. It’s all part of the vast recycling network of the physics community.
These international projects, selected during the process to plan the future of U.S. particle physics, are all set to come online within the next 10 years.
SuperCDMS physicists are testing a way to amp up dark matter vibrations to help them search for lighter particles.
This neutrino-watchers season preview will give you the rundown on what to expect to come out of neutrino research in the coming years.
Fermilab is providing technology and expertise for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB project, which will expand the hunt for dark matter to particles with properties not visible to any other experiment.
Prototype tests of the future SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment are in full swing.
Although they might be invisible to the naked eye, contaminants less than a micron in size can ruin very sensitive experiments in particle physics.