Comment
Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
By half. Still, the chance of seeing such an incident for xenon 124 is vanishingly small - unless one gathers enough xenon atoms and puts them in the "most radio-pure place on Earth," Tunnell said. "A key point here is that we have so many atoms, so if any decays, we'll see it," he said. "We have a (literal) ton of material." That place, set deep inside a mountain in Italy, is a chamber that contains a ton of highly purified liquid xenon shielded in every possible way from radioactive interference. Called the XENON1T experiment, it's the latest in a series of chambers designed to find the first direct evidence of dark matter, the mysterious substance thought to account for most of the matter in the universe. It has the ability to observe other unique natural phenomena as well. One such probe in the latest year-long run was to monitor for the predicted decay of xenon 124. Sorting through the pile of data produced by the chamber revealed "tens" of these decays, said Tunnell, who joined Rice this year as part of the university's Data Science Initiative. "We can see single neutrons, single photons, single electrons," he said. "Everything that enters into this detector will deposit energy in some way, and it's measurable." XENON1T can detect photons that spring to life in the liquid medium as well as electrons drawn to a top layer of charged xenon gas. Both are produced when xenon 124 decays. "There are different ways in
Add Comment