Dark Matter

PASADENA, Calif. Feb 2008:

"Scientists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment, including researchers from the California Institute of Technology, today announced that they have regained the lead in the worldwide race by a number of different research groups to find the particles that make up dark matter. The CDMS experiment, which is being conducted a half-mile underground in a mine in Soudan, Minnesota, again sets the world's best constraints on the properties of dark matter candidates.

"Weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, are leading candidates for the building blocks of dark matter, the as-yet-unknown form of matter that accounts for 85 percent of the entire mass of the universe. Hundreds of billions of WIMPs may have passed through your body as you read these sentences.

"The CDMS experiment is located in the Soudan Underground Laboratory, shielded from cosmic rays and other particles that could mimic the signals expected from dark matter particles. Scientists operate the ultrasensitive CDMS detectors under clean-room conditions at a temperature of about 40 millikelvins, or .04 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. Physicists believe that WIMPs, if they exist, would travel right through ordinary matter, rarely leaving a trace. If WIMPs were to cross the CDMS detector, occasionally one would hit the nucleus of an atom of the element germanium in the crystal grid of the detector. Like a hammer hitting a bell, the collision would create vibrations of the grid, which scientists would be able to detect. The experiment is sensitive enough to hear WIMPs if they hit the crystal germanium detector only twice per year.

"The scientists did not observe such signals, allowing the CDMS experiment to set limits on the properties of WIMPs."

Translation: at great expense, they found nothing. Absolutely zilch.

They've found nothing for thirty years. Would you fund more research into this guff?