---
title: "Deep in a South Dakota Gold Mine, UMD Physicists Prospect for Dark Matter"
date: 2023-02-03T05:30:00-05:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/deep-in-a-south-dakota-gold-mine-umd-physicists-prospect-for-dark-matter"
section: Articles
---
# Deep in a South Dakota Gold Mine, UMD Physicists Prospect for Dark Matter

*February 3, 2023* — by [Emily C. Nunez](/author/emily-c-nunez)


> A ‘Eureka’ Moment Could Rewrite Standard Model of Particle Physics, Basic Understanding of Forces in Universe

*2 A4 146 4975195 3546445817 6 1920x1080 — A mile below the surface in South Dakota in an abandoned gold mine, using a detector that is part of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, a UMD physics team is hunting for a yet-undiscovered particle that could explain the mystery of dark matter in the universe.*

Nestled in the mountains of western South Dakota is the little town of Lead, which [bills itself](https://www.leadmethere.org) as “quaint” and “rough around the edges.” Visitors driving past the hair salon or dog park may never guess that an unusual—even otherworldly—experiment is happening a mile below the surface.

A research team that includes University of Maryland physics faculty members and graduate students hopes to lure a hypothesized particle from outer space to the town’s Sanford Underground Research Facility, housed in a former gold mine that operated at the height of the 1870s gold rush.

They’re prospecting for WIMPs—no, not 97-pound weaklings, but “weakly interacting massive particles,” which are thought to have formed when the universe was just a microsecond old and which may exist unseen all around us. The [research facility](https://sanfordlab.org/feature/science-impact)suits this type of search because the depth prevents the intrusion of cosmic rays, which would otherwise interfere with experiments.

If WIMPs are observed, they could hold clues to some of the most perplexing problems in physics: the nature of the mysterious, hypothetical substance called “dark matter” and the very structure of the universe itself.

**Just Getting Started**  
The UMD team is led by physics Professor Carter Hall, who has been looking for dark matter for 15 years. Excited by the possibility of observing unexplained physical phenomena, Hall joined the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment, an earlier instrument at the Sanford Lab that attempted to detect dark matter from 2012 to 2016.   
  
LUX was the most sensitive WIMP dark matter detector in the world until 2018. Its successor at Sanford, the new and improved LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, launched last year. Hall believes LZ, which was specifically designed to search for WIMPS and has a significantly larger target, has even better odds of detecting or ruling them out as a dark matter candidate. The discovery of WIMPS could help account for the missing 85% of the universe’s mass—which calculations predict must exist, but can’t be seen.



*graphic explaining LZ detector — In the LZ experiment, bursts of light are produced by particle collisions. Researchers then work backward, using the characteristics of these flashes of light to determine the type of particle as they search for a type known as a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle), a candidate for dark matter. (Illustration courtesy of the LUX-ZEPLIN collaboration)*




**Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research)


**Tags:** [Physics](https://today.umd.edu/topic/physics), [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research)


**Units:** [College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-computer-mathematical-and-natural-sciences)