New measurement of dark-matter signal to be announced next week

Nature : The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment based in Lead, South Dakota, is the most sensitive dark-matter detection facility yet. It uses 122 tubes filled with liquid xenon to look for collisions of dark-matter particles. On 30 October, the facility will release its first set of collected data. Less sensitive detectors have previously found tenuous evidence for dark matter, but none of the findings have been confirmed by other detectors. LUX is sensitive enough that it will be able to either confirm or refute the previous findings. If it confirms any of the earlier experiments, that will be the first strong direct evidence of the existence of dark matter. If LUX does not find any evidence supporting the previous results, that will rule out some of the theorized forms of dark matter that should be detectable in the range of energies that LUX is sensitive to.