Into the Impossible With Brian Keating Did We Detect Dark Matter… or Fool Ourselves?
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Oct 21, 2025 Kaixuan Ni, a leading experimental physicist from UC San Diego focused on dark matter detection, discusses groundbreaking work in the field. He highlights liquid xenon detectors that fingerprint atomic collisions, revealing potential insights into dark matter and how these technologies can also monitor nuclear reactors. The debate around the DAMA/LIBRA experiment’s unconfirmed findings sparks intrigue. Kaixuan shares unexpected discoveries like solar neutrinos and rare nuclear decays, illustrating how the search for dark matter intertwines with vital global safety efforts.
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Annual Modulation Is The Key Signature
- Dark matter should produce an annual modulation as Earth changes velocity through the galactic halo.
- DAMA/LIBRA claims that modulation but other more sensitive experiments disagree, creating a deep conflict.
Xenon TPCs Fingerprint Particle Collisions
- Dual-phase liquid xenon TPCs record two signals (S1 and S2) to reconstruct events and discriminate backgrounds.
- That 'atomic fingerprint' gives xenon detectors far better event ID than DAMA's single-scintillation approach.
Examine Low-Energy Backgrounds Carefully
- If you work on a DAMA-like experiment, deeply study low-energy backgrounds and systematics in the data.
- Examine whether unnoticed contaminations or detector effects could produce the observed modulation.
