Drexel Scientist Searches for Dark Matter

Equipment for the PICO-60 experiment at SNOLAB. Courtesy of SNOLAB.

February 28, 2017

We all know that about 70 percent of the Earth is covered in water. That’s something you learn in elementary school.

Now, imagine that 80 percent of the Earth was covered in water — but we couldn’t see it and didn’t know exactly where it was, just that there was something else out there.

That gives you a glimpse of how dark matter exists in our universe — and in our collective understanding: There’s a ton of it, we don’t really know anything about it, but there’s a lot of indirect evidence saying it’s there.

So that’s why Russell Neilson, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, is part of a multinational team, called the PICO Collaborative, doing ultra-fine experiments to try to find just one particle of dark matter. And the most recent experiment by that team — whose results were released this week — was the world’s closest stab at that.