An international group of scientists XENON collaboration published the results of experiments to search for dark matter. Physicists have discovered a mysterious anomaly that could be the reason for the residual number of atoms of tritium (hydrogen isotope), and evidence of the existence of solar axions, or some unknown properties of neutrinos. About it reported in a press release published on the website Phys.org.
The XENON1T detector is designed to detect dark matter, which, according to modern notions, is to 85 percent of matter in the Universe. Until now, scientists had seen only the indirect signs of dark matter. Hypothetical wimpy particles (WIMP) are among the candidates for the role of dark matter particles, however, were only defined the limit of the probability of interaction of a wide range of mass winow. XENON1T is also sensitive to other types of particles.
The XENON1T detector is several tons of xenon, which serves as a target for particles that interact and produce photons and free electrons. Researchers have estimated the number of such background events and found their excess compared to the expected value. One explanation is the presence of multiple tritium atoms, but it cannot be confirmed. An alternative hypothesis implies the existence of new particles called axions, the source of which is the Sun. Another possibility is a mismatch of properties (magnetic moment) of the neutrino with the value in the Standard model.
