It's called 'dark' because it doesn't
interact with any light, any radiation.
That's why it's called 'dark'.
It's called 'matter' because it acts
like matter, because it pulls using gravitation.
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
It's distributed everywhere.
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
It's passing through us right now,
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
but nobody has detected that particle that
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
has very weak interaction.
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
If dark matter comes and hits your nucleus
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
it's going to leave a very little amount of energy.
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
So, just like a fly hitting a car.
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
So, the question is "How do you know?"
You could actually design a car where
you can be sensitive to a fly hitting your car,
ok, you just have to have the right sensor.
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
The detectors that we are using
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
are large detectors.
In our environment there are all these
cell phones, wires, electromagnetic interference,
and so on, so you need to shield against them.
So, your instrumentation is not sensitive
to noise, to environmental noise.
[Dr. H. Rusty Harris]
And, so what we do is we put these things
[Dr. H. Rusty Harris]
down in a mineshaft,
[Dr. H. Rusty Harris]
let the Earth automatically shield
[Dr. H. Rusty Harris]
all of the other things, and then wait
for a dark matter particle to hit it.
When it hits it, it creates a small
change in heat, and so we measure that
by superconductors, and it creates a small
amount of charge, and we measure that by
very sensitive electronics.
And, looking at the two and comparing them
allows us to say whether or not it was
some standard particle in the universe that
we already know fairly well,
or a particle that is new, that is different,
that doesn't happen very often, but is
massive, has a lot of mass associated with it.
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
Usually when you plan this experiment,
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
they get very expensive.
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
Why? Because you would be finding a reactor
[Dr. Rupak Mahapatra]
someplace, find a detector from somebody,
come up with electronics from somebody,
but here we have all the expertise we need
under one roof.
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
We had this opportunity to work,
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
to 'close the loop' basically, here.
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
We fabricate detectors,
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
we process detectors here,
and we can test them in the refrigerator
at the same time, which gives us
a big leverage in terms of research.
Texas A&M provided that environment.
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
We are looking for a very, very big question,
[Dr. Nader Mirabolfathi]
and very challenging experiment so,
it is worth to spend some dollars on it.
