Science

Researchers say they may have detected a dark matter particle for the first time

By Raul Alonzo,

Published September 13, 2026 at 7:02 PM CDT

The LUX-ZEPLIN main detector is seen in a surface lab before installation underground.

For the first time, scientists believe they may have detected a dark matter particle.

Researchers have studied dark matter for most of the last century, but a recent breakthrough provides the strongest evidence yet that the substance believed to make up 85 percent of the mass of the universe actually exists.

Scott Kravitz, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment team analyzing dark matter data, says the finding is not definitive, but the lack of a more generic explanation for what researchers detected is an encouraging milestone.

“There are plenty of interactions that we saw that we could sift through, but they didn’t look like dark matter until just recently when we saw one interaction that we just cannot explain with any of the known background interactions we can think of,” Kravitz said.

Researchers with the LZ experiment utilize a particle detector that Kravitz says generates a flash of light when a high-energy particle goes through it.

When a WIMP, or weakly interacting massive particle, collides with a xenon atom, the xenon atom emits a flash of light and electrons. The light is detected at the top and bottom of the liquid xenon chamber. An electric field drifts the electrons to the top of the chamber, where they generate a second flash of light.

While such a particle could be dark matter, it could also be a gamma ray, a neutron, or another familiar type of particle. Kravitz says the challenge for researchers is being confident that what they’ve detected is actually dark matter

“It’s basically a flash of light that’s at much higher energy and with a particular signature that doesn’t match what that interaction would look like for the other types of particle interactions that we would expect,” Kravitz said. “If it were one of these background interactions, it would basically show up differently in our detectors than it does.”

What is dark matter?

While its name and the ongoing efforts to definitively detect it suggest a substance shrouded in mystery, Kravitz says the existence of dark matter has been accepted by the scientific community for some time.

The substance itself he describes as the “invisible stuff” that holds ours and distant galaxies together through its gravitational pull.

“We’re actually used to the concept of recognizing things as real even if we can’t see them,” Kravitz said. “No one doubts that wind is real because we can feel its push on us. So just like that, we know that dark matter is there because of its gravitational pull.”

So that extra, invisible mass that keeps stars, interstellar gas and other celestial objects from flying out of orbit is what scientists call dark matter.

The LZ team keeps the detector running one mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

But while confidence in its existence is accepted in the scientific community, tangible proof has been elusive — particularly in detecting it on Earth. It’s what has led to such initiatives as the LZ experiment, which consists of about 200 collaborators working since 2021 to detect it.

Kravitz says this latest potential breakthrough has generated excitement, but the real work of confirming their discovery wont come until at least several months has given them enough time to produce a larger data set.

“But we could be on the precipice of this happening and really being the first to definitively discover dark matter in this particular way,” Kravitz said. “So that’s very exciting for all of us.”

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