Tag Archives: dark matter

The universe is getting hot, hot, hot, a new study suggests

Temperature has increased about 10-fold over the last 10 billion years

The universe is getting hotter, a new study has found.

The study, published Oct. 13 in the Astrophysical Journal, probed the thermal history of the universe over the last 10 billion years. It found that the mean temperature of gas across the universe has increased more than 10 times over that time period and reached about 2 million degrees Kelvin today — approximately 4 million degrees Fahrenheit. (more…)

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Hunting for Dark Matter’s ‘Hidden Valley’

Berkeley Lab’s Kathryn Zurek wants to make sure we’re looking in the right places.

Kathryn Zurek realized a decade ago that we may be searching in the wrong places for clues to one of the universe’s greatest unsolved mysteries: dark matter. Despite making up an estimated 85 percent of the total mass of the universe, we haven’t yet figured out what it’s made of. (more…)

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New ultra-sensitive instrument aims to detect hints of elusive dark matter particles

There is five times more dark matter in the universe than “normal” matter—the atoms and molecules that make up the familiar world. Yet, it is still unknown what this dominant dark component actually is. On Nov. 11 an international collaboration of scientists inaugurated the new XENON1T instrument designed to search for dark matter with unprecedented sensitivity at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory in Italy. (more…)

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Hide & Seek: Sterile Neutrinos Remain Elusive

Daya Bay neutrino experiment publishes a new result on its first search for a “sterile” neutrino

BEIJING; BERKELEY, CA; and UPTON, NY—The Daya Bay Collaboration, an international group of scientists studying the subtle transformations of subatomic particles called neutrinos, is publishing its first results on the search for a so-called sterile neutrino, a possible new type of neutrino beyond the three known neutrino “flavors,” or types. The existence of this elusive particle, if proven, would have a profound impact on our understanding of the universe, and could impact the design of future neutrino experiments. The new results, appearing in the journal Physical Review Letters, show no evidence for sterile neutrinos in a previously unexplored mass range. (more…)

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Ancient gene

Researchers at UD use ancient gene to study virus biology

Researchers at the University of Delaware have discovered that an ancient gene — ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), which occurs in all cellular life — provides important biological insights into the characteristics of unknown viruses in the sea. (more…)

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It’s go time for LUX-Zeplin experiment in dark matter

From the physics labs at Yale University to the bottom of a played-out gold mine in South Dakota, a new generation of dark matter experiments is ready to commence.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation recently gave the go-ahead to LUX-Zeplin (LZ), a key experiment in the hunt for dark matter, the invisible substance that may make up much of the universe. Daniel McKinsey, a professor of physics, leads a contingent of Yale scientists working on the project. (more…)

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