



Confirming that dark matter exists would transform our understanding of the basic building blocks of our universe and provide vital clues about how the universe was born and how it will change. And by 2021, two new machines are scheduled to join the hunt.

"There are a few times in the history of humans that scientists have come across something so groundbreaking, so universe-changing, and for a few minutes, they're the only ones who know about it," said Andrew Renshaw, an assistant professor at the University of Houston. "To be part of something like that, it would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

Renshaw is part of a collaboration called the DarkSide project. It's building a dark matter detector, DarkSide-20k, in the largest underground laboratory in the world, located under the Gran Sasso mountain about 75 miles south of Rome. Nearby, in the city of L'Aquila, he said it's not uncommon for scientists and engineers to spot each other on the street or in cafes.

Across the globe, about an hour away from Mount Rushmore, the LUX-ZEPLIN, or LZ, detector is being built in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. Researchers access the lab by riding a cage down a mine shaft. They have to wear hard hats and carry a breathing apparatus called a self-rescuer, just in case a fire breaks out.



