Large Underground Xenon's Dark Matter Detector's First Results Revealed: Watch The Live Stream Here

Update: Sanford Labs' website is receiving a high amount of traffic due to the event. A direct link to the team's paper can be viewed here.

The results from the Large Underground Xenon's dark matter detector will be unveiled as part of a live stream event beginning at 11 a.m. EDT. Wednesday. The physicists will also answer questions and will discuss the findings with the public.

The dark matter detector is housed at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, S.D., and was made possible through a $70 million donation from T. Denny Sanford, a South Dakota philanthropist. LUX is looking for a particle that could be used to determine the existence of dark matter, the "weakly interacting massive particle" or WIMP. The project is similar to one recently announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers at MIT have developed the DarkLight experiment, a narrow high-powered beam of electrons, that is looking for a "massive photon" that could explain the existence of dark matter.

While dark matter exists, it is also nearly impossible to detect. Most indirect observations rely on gravitational effects, but a particle such as WIMP would dramatically alter physics and open new research possibilities. LUX's dark matter detector is buried deep underground in the abandoned Homestake gold mine in the Black Hills. Nobel laureate Ray Davis built his neutrino detector at the mine, but it was shut down in 2003, a year after Davis won the Nobel Prize for Physics, notes the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

The dark matter detector live stream begins at 11 a.m. EDT and can be viewed here. A video detailing the moving-in process of the dark matter detector can be viewed below.