08/26/2026
A deep underground and extremely cold hunt 🔎
One of the world’s most sensitive dark matter searches, from more than a mile beneath Earth’s surface, has begun collecting its very first scientific data.
SLAC serves as lead lab for the international collaboration of 28 institutions. In a deep underground laboratory located in the Vale Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario, the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search houses 24 ultra-pure silicon and germanium crystals, each about the size of a hockey puck, outfitted with superconducting sensors and inside a refrigerator colder than outer space. If a dark matter particle strikes one of these crystals, it will produce a tiny vibration called a phonon, along with a small electrical signal. The entire set-up is surrounded by layers of clean shielding materials to prevent stray background radiation from drowning out the signal.
This early-science phase will continue through Fall 2026, after which the team plans to warm up the experiment to further optimize both the cryogenic system and noise environment. The warm-up and maintenance period is expected to last into late 2026, followed by a year of data collection with the detectors running at optimized, full sensitivity.
Image credit: [1-7] SuperCDMS
Learn more: https://stanford.io/4xoZ77K
The entire SuperCDMS set-up is surrounded by layers of clean shielding materials to prevent stray background radiation from drowning out the signal. Layers of copper, polyethylene, ultra-pure lead and a barrier against radon are used to reduce these backgrounds to acceptable levels.
The inner polyethylene neutron shield being assembled by (left to right) Joseph Mammo (USouthDakota), Warren Perry (UToronto), Prisca Cushman (UMinnesota), Mauro Bota (SNOLAB) and Marco Olivares (SNOLAB).
The low background shield being completed, showing layers of increasingly radiopure lead moving inward to the sensitive detectors embedded in.
