Hints of dark matter reported — again
SMU Physicist Jodi Cooley, who is involved in a search for dark matter, comments on reports of the CRESST-II experiment has seen hints of the weakly interacting massive particles,
By Devin Powell
In the war of the WIMPs, a new combatant has joined the fray. The CRESST-II experiment has seen hints of the weakly interacting massive particles, a leading candidate for the hidden dark matter thought to account for most of the universe’s matter.
The new results, reported September 6 at the International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics in Munich, add controversy to an already contentious field that is divided into two camps: those that have seen signs of the particles and those that haven’t. . .
“I don’t think we know for sure exactly what is going on,” says Jodi Cooley, a particle physicist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “Based on the understanding we have of dark matter and how it behaves, I’m not sure how much agreement I would say that these experiments have.”
Cooley works on the CDMS II experiment in Minnesota’s Soudan mine, one of two detectors that have seen no signs of dark matter or its purported particles at all. XENON100, which searches for dark matter using a tank of noble gas in Gran Sasso, has ruled out all of the WIMPs proposed by CRESST-II and its compatriots.
Read more about Professor Jodi Cooley's research.
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