Dark matter alternative lead

No one knows what dark matter is, or if it even really exists.

But that hasn't stopped a team of physicists from commandeering a mile-deep hole in the ground left behind by a boarded-up gold mine in South Dakota with the express intention of finding some.

The 50 researchers staked out in Lead, South Dakota (pop. 2,848) comprise the membership of the LUX project, so named for the Large Underground Xenon dark matter detector that is the crux of their operation. LUX is one of ten projects in the world right now searching for dark matter, and its members are driven not just by the usual pride that scientists take in the onward march of knowledge but also by wanting to be first.

Science hasn't settled on just what dark matter is or what it's made of, but the prevailing theory holds that it is composed of WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, so that's what LUX hunts for in the enormous pit beneath Lead. Of course, there's always the chance that they're wrong.

“If it ends up that dark matter is not made of WIMPs, it will be much more disappointing in a philosophical sense than in a personal sense, in that humankind won’t know what dark matter is,” project co-founder Tom Shutt says. “We’re fully prepared that we might not find it ourselves. But if we as a community don’t find it, that will be awfully disappointing.”