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Two Big Dark Matter Experiments Gain US Support

Posted by Soulskill on from the stuff-that-dark-matters dept.

Graculus writes: The Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation announced on Friday that they will try to fund two major experiments to detect particles of the mysterious dark matter whose gravity binds the galaxies instead of just one. The decision allays fears that the funding agencies could afford only one experiment to continue the search for so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.

1 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Dark Matter == Measurement Uncertainty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, you can look at error bars on galaxy rotation curve results like this, which is old enough to end up in an intro cosmology course. If it were just visible matter, it would be the curve labeled "disk". If you add the curve "halo" you get the total, with the small measurement error bars shown. Surveys like this show the limits of such halos being just from compact but dark objects.