Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 16 April 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.763
News
Physicists see the dark?
Italian team says elusive particles spotted in underground detector.
For the second time in eight years, an Italian research collaboration is claiming to see a clear signature of dark matter — the massive, rarely interacting particles that are thought to fill the universe.
Rita Bernabei, a physicist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, presented the results at a conference on Wednesday in Venice.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
After reading this, I'm having a case of déja-vu. Does it remind anyone else of the Michelson-Morley experiment?
The fact that they are receiving a seasonal variation is telling. Given that this experiments laboratory is essentially the earth, and its not possible to take a closed experiment, as you would with say, a chemical experiment. What needs to happen is a double experiment in both northern and southern hemispheres to rule any possible explanation to do with the entropy changes of the earth during seasons because there are 1000's of things that could be triggering a detector like this.
Any chance of building a spacial detector?...
Kelly - The nore I think about it, the more this does sound like the search for 'ether' - a pervasive substance that is somehow fundamental to explaining the gaps in our view of the universe, but is also nearly impossible to detect. Except that Michelson-Morley found a resounding lack of evidence for the ether wind but Bernabei et al have some evidence, if uncertain. I just wonder if WIMPs are the only thing that can be setting off their detectors.