Deep underground, a refrigerator about a hundred times colder than outer space — designed to detect dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up 85 per cent of all matter in the universe — has just reached a critical milestone.

Scientists working on the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment have successfully cooled it to the temperature required for the superconducting detectors to become operational. For SuperCDMS, that temperature is just tens of milliKelvin, or thousandths of a degree, above absolute zero.

“Reaching this base temperature now allows us to turn on the detectors, make sure they are all working, and start collecting data that potentially is coming from dark matter particles hitting our detectors,” says Professor Miriam Diamond, a co-principal investigator in the collaboration and a member of the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Department of Physics.

More information here: https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/search-dark-matter-u-t-physicists-achieve-frigid-milestone-supercdms-experiment-sudbury-mine