It is a single data point, but enough to send a shiver down physicists' spines. Some time in 2023 or 2024, a detector containing 10 tonnes of ultra-pure liquid xenon registered an unusual energetic flash. It was the type of signal that could be caused by a collision between an atom's nucleus and a massive dark-matter particle as it passes through our Galaxy. If the finding can be backed up with more data, it could mean that dark matter ' the invisible stuff that is thought to keep galaxies from flying apart ' has finally been discovered. And it would show that dark matter consists of particles much more massive than protons, namely the 'weakly interacting massive particles' (WIMPs) that have been theorized but remained undetected despite decades of searching. Researchers working with the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, announced the result on 1 September at the TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Tendo, Japan, and...
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