Berkeley Lab physicists hosted 2024 Dark Matter Day outreach events with interactive programs for all ages at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley on October 31, and at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland on November 1.
Participants engaged in hands-on activities with Berkeley Lab physicists to learn about dark matter and experiments leading the way in its detection. Berkeley Lab leads the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) and TESSERACT dark matter experiments, which aim to directly observe dark matter interactions with earth-based detectors.
“It’s always great to share your research and connect with a wide audience. More often than not, participants have incredibly insightful questions that really make you think,” said Dan Kodroff, a Chamberlain Postdoctoral Fellow in Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division, who organized the events. “I’m also always out to recruit the next generation of physicists to work with us in the future.”
Michael Williams teaches participants about the mysteries of dark matter and why we go deep underground to search for it, as part of Berkeley Lab’s Dark Matter Day event at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, CA, on November 1. Photo credit: Emily Perry, Berkeley Lab
The team of Berkeley Lab hosts also included Chamberlain Postdoctoral Fellows Michael Williams and Emily Perry, UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Ibles Olcina at Chabot; and graduate student interns Taurean Zhang and Yue Wang, and DOE GROWTH-MSI (Minority Serving Institutions) Program student intern Bahareh Ardestani at the Lawrence Hall of Science.
Hands-on activities included an interactive demonstration of how subatomic particles leave unique imprints in particle detectors, e.g., when particles interact with liquid xenon in the LZ experiment. Students could also hold a photomultiplier tube, the sensor with which LZ collects light produced by particle interactions. The Berkeley Lab team also presented videos and infographic posters of the LZ detector, and participants received stickers and dark chocolate candy, in honor of dark matter and Halloween.
A young participant learns how LZ detects particle interactions in liquid xenon, as Emily Perry demonstrates using imprints of differently-sized items left in a tub of flour, at Berkeley Lab’s Dark Matter Day event at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, CA, on November 1. Photo credit: Dan Kodroff, Berkeley Lab
Dark Matter is a term that physicists use to refer to the mysterious and unknown substance that is thought to make up about 27% of the total mass and energy in the known Universe. Dark Energy, which is theorized to be driving the universe’s accelerating expansion, accounts for another 68%. Researchers learn about Dark Matter and Dark Energy by studying their gravitational effects on the remaining 5% of known matter in the Universe, which includes everything from atoms and gasses to planets, stars, and even black holes.
Dark Matter Day has been sponsored annually since 2017 by the Interactions Collaboration, a global community of particle physicists at laboratories in Europe, North America, and Asia, which supports international particle physics collaboration.
Stay tuned for upcoming results from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) and TESSERACT experiments and other exciting dark matter research at Berkeley Lab.
