Massive underground laboratory in China joins the quest to find dark matter

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Sharmila is a Seattle-based science journalist. She found her love for astronomy in Carl Sagan's The Pale Blue Dot and has been hooked ever since. She holds an MA in Journalism from Northeastern University and has been a contributing writer for Astronomy Magazine since 2017. Follow her on Twitter at @skuthunur.

The Deep Underground and Ultra-low Radiation Background Facility for Frontier Physics Experiments is located beneath Jinping Mountain in Sichuan's Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.Dark matter — an invisible substance that somehow makes up over 80 percent of all matter in the universe — is a phenomenon that frustratingly eludes scientists. Despite being sought after for decades, and providing us with clues that it does indeed exist, dark matter has never been directly detected.

Built inside repurposed tunnels running through the Jinping Mountains in China's Sichuan Province, the lab is buried beneath 2,400 meters of rock. The reason for its deep, lonely location is that so much rock can reduce background noise found in dark matter data, typically induced by things likeSpread across 330,000 cubic meters, the enormous new facility is home to two upgraded dark matter detectors. The lab also has exceptional horizontal access.

Another leading alternative for the dark matter particle include axions, also a category of hypothetical particles thought to flood the universe and behave exactly like dark matter. Other exotic interpretations remain, such as the popular but unconfirmed theory that dark matter particles somehow interact with themselves .Dark matter experts say the upgraded Jinping lab could also help answer more fundamental questions, such as whether"particles" really constitute dark matter.

 

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