New data from XENON100 narrows the possible range for dark matter
An International team of scientists in the XENON collaboration, including several from the Weizmann Institute, announced on Thursday the results of their search for the elusive component of our universe known as dark matter. This search was conducted with greater sensitivity than ever before. After one hundred days of data collection in the XENON100 experiment, carried out deep underground at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the INFN, in Italy, they found no evidence for the existence of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles or WIMPs the leading candidates for the mysterious dark matter. The three candidate events they observed were consistent with two they expected to see from background radiation. These new results reveal the highest sensitivity reported as yet by any dark matter experiment, while placing the strongest constraints on new physics models for particles of dark matter. Weizmann Institute professors Eilam Gross, Ehud Duchovni and Amos Breskin,...