These particles rarely interact with ordinary matter except through gravity dark matter has only been observed through its gravitational effects on galaxies and clusters of galaxies, leading researchers to believe that W.I.M.P.s are the leading candidate for dark matter. WeвЂ™ll study and reduce the neutron interactions rate, but help us understand the signal weвЂ™re expecting,вЂќ Carmona said.

вЂњItвЂ™s going to act like a neutron, so neutrons act as a background for us. By detecting the light and the electrons, we can differentiate between different kinds of particles,вЂќ Carmona said.Д¬armona and her colleagues are looking for dark matter in the form of W.I.M.P.s, weakly interacting massive particles. We have that on the bottom and top of the chamber. So when a particle interacts the xenon, it produces some light and electrons and we can detect this light with photomultipliers, a device that detects light. In a time-projection chamber one mile underground вЂњwe have liquid xenon, and on the top there is some xenon gas.

Postdoctoral candidate and UCSB researcher Carmen Carmona, who has been a part of the research team since 2009, explained how the experiment is set up. Dark matter has never been directly detected, but the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment is determined to change that. While it makes up about 80 percent of the matter in the entire Universe, its detection has eluded physicists and scientists since it was first hypothesized.

One of the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics is dark matter.

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