MIT to use particle accelerator to detect dark matter

The Verge : Earlier today, scientists at the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector announced that they had not found evidence of dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). A different form of dark matter is the target of a project already in development, led by Richard Milner of MIT. The theoretical dark matter would be similar to a photon except that it would have mass. Milner’s team is converting a particle accelerator at the Jefferson Lab in Virginia to attempt to detect the photon-like matter. They believe a narrow beam of 1-MW electrons will allow them to detect the pair of particles that the theoretical matter would decay into. The project, named DarkLight, still requires at least two years of testing before it can begin operations, and it would collect data for two more years before announcing any results.