Xenon and Helium used to Search for Dark Matter
- Sep 15, 2022
- 3 min read
Sitting a mile below ground in an abandoned gold mine in South Dakota is a gigantic cylinder holding 10 tons of purified liquid xenon monitored by more than 250 scientists around the world. That tank of xenon is the heart of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, an effort to detect dark matter – the mysterious invisible substance that makes up 85% of the matter in the universe. The LZ uses helium gas as a part of the process - a carrier gas in the gas charcoal chromatography.