Recommended by us: A Cosmic Quest for Dark Matter

In the following I attached an article appeared two days ago in The Wall Street Journal about the DarkSide-50 experiment located in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, in which I am deeply involved since I am a member of the collaboration. I was there in those days and for this reason I know also some funny behind the scenes :)

By the way, I was lucky enough to see even more snow than that you see at the beginning of the video, thanks to a big snow storm that happened just a day after the realization of the following interview.

I have attached also some pictures of my stay during the DarkSide General meeting.

Enjoy the read!

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A Cosmic Quest for Dark Matter 

Scientists are hunting one of the biggest prizes in physics: tiny particles called wimps that could unlock some of the universe’s oldest secrets

By GAUTAM NAIK
Feb. 13, 2015 1:32 pm E.T.

A mile under Italy's Gran Sasso mountain, scientists are seeking one of the smallest objects in the universe—and one of the most biggest prizes in physics: a wimp.

A wimp—a weakly interacting massive particle—is thought to be the stuff of dark matter, an invisible substance that makes up about a quarter of the universe but has never been seen by humans.

Gravity is the force that holds things together, and the vast majority of it emanates from dark matter. Ever since the big bang, this mystery material has been the universe’s prime architect, giving it shape and structure. Without dark matter, there would be no galaxies, no stars, no planets. Solving its mystery is crucial to understanding what the universe is made of.

Per Pasqua arriva il "terzo" neutrino trasformista...

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La collaborazione internazionale OPERA ai Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso ha osservato per la terza volta un neutrino “tau”. Si tratta di un neutrino partito dal CERN come neutrino di sapore muonico che, nel percorrere i 730 chilometri che separano Ginevra dai LNGS, ha cambiato “sapore” trasformandosi in neutrino di tipo tau. Un evento rarissimo che conferma le precedenti osservazioni del 2012 e 2010 e che comporta la prova del fenomeno dell’oscillazione del neutrino per cui è stato concepito, nel 2001, il gigantesco rivelatore OPERA orientato in direzione del CERN dove un fascio di neutrini muonici viene prodotto in direzione dei LNGS. OPERA cerca i neutrini tau sapendo che in partenza dal CERN i neutrini sono tutti muonici. Trovare neutrini di un altro sapore comporta la prova dell’esistenza dell’oscillazione durante i 730 chilometri di viaggio. Questi nuovi dati vengono presentati oggi ai LNGS nell’ambito del seminario “New results of the OPERA experiment”.

Notizia pubblicata dell'Ufficio Comunicazione INFN. Fonte: http://www.infn.it/

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