Giant underground detector inches nearer to detecting true dark matter

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment, located nearly a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, has made significant progress in the search for dark matter, which constitutes about 85% of the universe yet remains largely mysterious. The international research team focused on detecting weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a leading dark matter candidate hypothesized to have originated in the early universe. Using a 10-tonne liquid xenon detector, they explored WIMP masses between five and ten GeV/c², a previously uncharted energy range, and successfully identified boron-8 neutrino signals—tiny particles from the Sun that interact with xenon similarly to how dark matter particles are expected to. These findings mark a new milestone by demonstrating the detector’s sensitivity to signals at low masses, effectively opening a new observational window for dark matter detection. The presence of known neutrino signals confirms that the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment is operating as intended