Lurking beneath Gran Sasso mountain in Italy is a plastic vat containing 62 kg of liquid xenon lined with 178 photomultiplier tubes designed to detect the signature of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), a leading candidate for Dark Matter. This is the XENON100 Dark Matter Project, and a preprint of a paper announcing initial results has appeared on arXiv.org. The preliminary result? Zilch!
Dark Matter Results from 100 Live Days of XENON100 Data.
By XENON100 Collaboration (, et al.). Apr 2011. 5pp.
e-Print: arXiv:1104.2549 [astro-ph.CO]
- Dennis Overbye, “Particle Hunt Nets Almost Nothing; the Hunters Are Almost Thrilled” – New York Times
- “Xenon100: Nothing” – Resonaances Particle Theory Blog
- “No WIMPs” – Not Even Wrong
- “The New XENON 100 Results On Dark Matter” – A Quantum Diaries Survivor
- “No Dark Matter Seen by XENON” – Cosmic Variance
Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot? 