Searching For Dark Matter From Deep Under an Italian Mountain

Zothecula writes "Like the Higgs Boson, dark matter is one of those things in the Universe that evidence points to, but is very difficult to pin down. A team of researchers is looking to verify the existence of this most elusive of ingredients that is thought to make up 23 percent of the Universe using powerful detectors buried deep in an Italian mountain. The DarkSide-50 project is an international collaboration between Italian, French, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Chinese institutions, as well as 17 American universities. The project team spent last (Northern hemisphere) summer assembling the detector in a laboratory deep within the Gran Sasso mountain, which is accessed via an exit off a six-mile (9.6 km) long highway tunnel in Italy."