While astronomers hope to collect new data from the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a team led by Yale University physicist, Dan McKinsey, is venturing into an abandoned gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota, U.S., trying to find answers in the depths of the earth.

Using a Large Underground Xenon experiment, or LUX, the group has installed a 350 kg liquid xenon time-projection chamber, which aims to directly detect galactic dark matter in an underground laboratory, built 1.6 km below the surface.

They are basically “listening” for dark matter signs, one of physics’ missing puzzle pieces, which experts know exceptionally little about. The other 65% of the universe is thought to be comprised of another mysterious force, dark energy.

Only about 4% of the universe is made up of “normal” matter – “everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments”, as Nasa explains it.

Although the researchers are not sure when they may hit the jackpot, Michael Salamon of the US Department of Energy told The Guardian he remains optimistic. “We know that we live in a sea of dark matter,” he said. “If nature is kind, we might have a very exciting discovery in the future.”

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