Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Did We Detect Dark Matter… or Fool Ourselves?

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/yt to win a meteorite 💥 What if 85% of the universe is invisible—and the one experiment claiming to have found it is wrong? For nearly three decades, Italian physicists have claimed their DAMA/LIBRA experiment detected the elusive particles that make up dark matter—the mysterious substance holding galaxies together. Yet no one else has ever confirmed it. Join Brian Keating, UCSD cosmologist and host of The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast, as he visits Kaixuan Ni and his team—scientists building the world’s most sensitive detectors deep underground—to uncover: • ⚛️ How detectors using liquid xenon can “fingerprint” single atomic collisions. • 💡 Why dark matter’s “heartbeat” signal divided physicists for 30 years. • ☢️ How dark-matter detectors are now being repurposed to detect nuclear weapons and monitor reactors remotely. • 🌞 The shocking discovery of solar neutrinos and ultra-rare nuclear decays—phenomena rarer than the age of the universe itself. This is the invisible architecture of reality—where cosmology meets particle physics, and theory meets obsession. 📍 Filmed at UC San Diego’s Mayer Hall and Harold Urey Hall — home to experiments that may finally prove what 85% of the cosmos is made of. 👇 Watch till the end to see how a failed dark-matter search could save the world from nuclear war. Key Takeaways: 00:00 "Dark Matter Detection Debate" 04:51 "Physics, Peace, and Deuterium" 08:20 "Annual Modulation from Dark Matter" 10:05 Particle Physics' Atomic Fingerprinting Revolution 16:03 "Data Processing for Dark Matter" 18:56 "Boron-8 Neutrinos Observed" 22:43 "Exploring Electron Recall Signal Excess" 24:22 "Xenon Experiment Resolves Signal Mystery" 30:11 S1, S2 Signal Discrimination 33:11 "Radon Control for Clean Detection" 34:26 "From Cosmic Mysteries to Peace" 38:10 Dark Matter: Undetected Mystery 🎥 Directed & Narrated by: Brian Keating 🔬 Featuring: Prof. Kaixuan Ni, Prof. Liang Yang, Zihao Shi (Columbia) 📍 Location: UC San Diego 🎙️ From The Professor Keating Experiments series Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Follow me to ask questions of my guests: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. For a hundred years, we've sensed the presence of an invisible force, dark matter,

first proposed by Fritz Zwicki in the 1930s, and later confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt by Vera Rubin herself. What would the universe look like without dark matter? Galaxies would still form, but they'd fly apart. Their outer stars would spin off like sparks from a pinwheel. In 1933, Fritz Wickey noticed this problem. in galaxies within the coma cluster. The visible matter couldn't account for the galaxy speeds he observed.

He called it Dunkel-nateri dark matter. Decades later, Vera Rubin found the same mystery in spiral galaxies. Stars far from the center weren't slowing down. Rotation curves were flat. Speeding up, an astronomical anomaly begging for an invisible explanation. Imagine two galaxies, one governed by Newton's laws alone, and one with an unseen halo of dark matter. In the dark matter rich galaxy, stars at the outer edges orbit almost as swiftly as those near the center. This observation is a cornerstone of

the dark matter hypothesis. It suggests not only that there's an unseen mass enveloping the galaxy, but that the dark matter would produce a telltale heartbeat revealing its presence. This iron ball is heating to 3,000 degrees. As it glows, it's radiating light across the electrical magnetic spectrum. We can see it, we can measure it, we can interact with it. This is normal matter, behaving exactly as we expect. It's dark and it's matter, but it's not dark matter. And most of the universe, it's nothing like this ball. Picture this. You're hunting for something that makes up 85% of the universe, but you've never seen it, can't touch it, and you aren't even sure you can prove that it exists. Your detector sits a mile underground, colder than Antarctica, waiting

for a collision that might happen once in a decade. And when it finally does, you're not even sure it's real. That's exactly what happened to my guest today. And what he discovered next will completely change how you think about the invisible universe around us. And you knew this Dharma results since I was an undergrad student in 1995. From experimental point view, other experiment, almost all of this experiment that are more sensitive in Dharma have already excluded that particular signal. Imagine Earth plowing through a cosmic headwind of invisible particles, dark matter particles.

As our planet circles the Sun, we glide on a helix riding through that dark matter wind. Sometimes we push against it, sometimes it blows with us. In March, the Earth trails behind the Sun. By June, it charges straight into the stream. The signal peaks. Six months later, the Earth swings around, moves away, and the wind slackens. It's then when the signal dips. And then the pattern repeats orbit after orbit year after year.

This annual rise and fall is the telltale heartbeat scientists have been searching for, the faint whisper of dark matter. And this signal is what the Dama Libra experiment claims to have seen, not just for one or two years, but for nearly the past 30 years. The signal that piqued Kaishuan's interest 30 years ago was produced by the Dama-Libra experiment. It shows the telltale pulse of our cosmic dance around the sun as the sun itself moves around our galaxy. The predictions of the dark matter model match exactly on what Dharma Libra has observed. So why don't all of Kaishuan's colleagues agree that Dahma has made the definitive detection? Right here, on the campus of UC San Diego, scientists are working to see the invisible, the missing matter that makes up most of the matter in the

universe. What they do is very complimentary to what scientists using cosmic microrate background do. We're all on the same teeth, although it's claimed that scientists, competitors, have seen a dark matter signal for over 30 years. This signal remains controversial. We'll explore the nature of that signal, how it was made, how it was first detected, and why colleagues are very skeptical about it. We'll interview the primary players in the new generation of searches using liquid noble gases like Xenac, fighting against backgrounds, man-made, natural, and cosmic in nature. We'll reveal the techniques and technologies that spin off from this research.

And a fascinating way that this research into cosmology and particle physics may pay dividends and helping, maintain peace, detect rogue nuclear weapons and even prevent a nuclear war. All this happens, not far from UCSD's famous URI Homme, named after Harold Uri. It's famous for many things. He was the first person to detect and measure the properties of Deuterium, which plays an enormous role not only in particle physics, but in cosmology as well. The abundance of Deuterium is one of the best pieces of evidence that we have

that the Big Bang occurred. Its abundance ratio matches almost perfectly the expectations that one would get from an early universe which is extremely hot, extremely dense, a fiery furnace, fusing protons to neutron. And I may seem implausible. How can a neutron, which is newtron, which is new, neutral bind to a proton which is possum.

Well, that's what Harold Dury figured out. Measuring heavy hydrogen. Paving the way for the measurement of Tridio, which is radioactively unstable. We've named our building, the chemistry department, is named after her. Won the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Before we dive into the controversy that's been tearing physics community apart for 30 years, you need to understand what's at stake here. If the Italian experiment we're about to discuss is right,

Dama Libra, it's the discovery of the century. If they're wrong, it's the most persistent false signal in human history. And what makes this extraordinary, my friend, Professor Kaishuan Nia at UC San Diego, is about to tell us why he spent his entire career trying either to confirm or debunk a claim that inspired him as a 20-year-old kid back in 1995. That was 30 years ago, three decades.

his whole life's obsession. And the signal, well, it's still dividing scientists to this very day. The universe would look very different without dark matter. Galaxies would spin much slower than they're observed to spin. The Earth following the sun trails at a much faster rate than would be expected if there was no dark matter

in our galaxy. Can you explain what the current thinking is of this experimental results? They claim 20 Sigma detection. They've measured it since 30 years now, and yet they're the only ones that believe it. So what is the state of perception of this result within your field? Is it a detection? Is it definitely not a detection or somewhere between?

Yeah, I knew this trauma results since I was a undergrad student in 1995, and that probably triggered me to come to US to study Doc Matter. But still exists now that the conflict without experiments. And so from experimental point view, almost all of this experiment that are more sensitive in Dharma have already excluded that particular signal. So they detect something, but something might not be documented. Might be some background that remain in the air detector.

Can you explain the principle behind the annual modulation technique? So annual modulation is really coming from like dark matter, you know, dark matter is in our galaxy, right, on the Earth, and the sun is moving around the galaxy, so it has a speed. So basically the sun has a relative motion with the dark matter halo, we call it. And the Earth is rotating around the sun, right?

So in June, when the Earth is rotating in the same direction of the sun, the speed to the dark matter halo is larger than in December when the Earth is rotating the opposite direction of the sun. So that different speed making the event rate different in the detector in June and December, there could be 5, 10% of variations, as we call annual modulation. So if we detect such annual modulation with a lot of events, that could be confirmation of, you know, dark planet as they could be because their other background but also modulate at the same base,

such as cosmic ray and neurons interacting and algorithm detect. Those three experiments are all in the northern hemisphere. Is there a plan to build an identical copy of DOMA or something cosine and mace in the southern hemisphere? There are the annual modulation. Yeah, there are proposals trying to build

for example, I believe the Saba, experiment in this sudden in Australia, has a sudden hemisphere. Could make delagulation maybe the phase different compared to the hemisphere. But that experiment is still under the metropics. Hold on to what you've just heard about seasonal modulation, because in a minute, Professor Ney is going to reveal the technology that makes his detectors fundamentally different from the controversial Italian experiment Dama Libra. What he's about to describe sounds like science fiction, a chamber that can fingerprint

individual particle collisions at the atomic level. It's like CSI particle physics. And that fingerprinting capability? It's exactly why the physics community is so divided about the 30-year-old claim of success by the Dama Libra experiment. No other event in scientific history has lasted so long without confirmation and yet been accepted by so many as being truth. Can you explain the way that Xenom detector system your experiment works? What is a dual-phase time projection chamber, TPC? So we use the dual-phase. We call dual-phase time-projection chamber.

It's mainly a liquid phase. This is the main target for interacting with the dark matter. And above that is a gas phase. And we need a gas phase because we want to amplify the signals. The document detect very low-ended signal in the liquid-zeney. and then produce ionization. And this ionization had to be shifted into the gas phase. So any tiny sub-KV vans can be amplified.

One electron can be amplified by 100 times, a thousand times, turn into light, and then we can detect these tiny energies. That's the main advantage of due phase. Time projection sounds very futuristic. What does it actually mean? time projection of chamber, TPC. So it's, first, you know, we have one interaction, and then ionization starts to drift, right? So there's a time.

So we will know the time, and this time tells you the event position in this direction. So that's where the time comes. And projection, sometime you can also think of as, you know, in our case, this event will eventually will be ionization charts will be drifted on the top and it will give you localize the signal. And this local and give you the kind of a position in this direct, X, Y direction. So that gives you a kind of projection.

Okay. And so it's very different than the Dama experiment. Zama uses scintillation, dark matter, if it exists, comes in, and there's a reaction that causes a pulse of light, effectively, correct? That's right. Damma used the scintillation.

We also use scintillation. You know, before the initiation chart drift, we also have a direct scintillation, but we have two signals. So these two signals will tell you actually the difference between men in background from the actual signal. Dharma, I believe,

just using the scintillation. The crystal is actually a scintillation crystal. Their scintillation crystal is also very pure, you know, very clean, and they detect these scintillation pulses and trying to look for them into whether, or they cannot tell the difference between a nuclear recoil or electron recalls or backgrounds,

but they can just count how many events to the lowest energy possible and then use the modulation as information. I see. So it has less... Diminating. Yes. I want to pause here and give you some perspective

on what we're talking about. The interaction Professor needs described, a dark matter particle hitting a zenon at him would be like a mosquito flying into a freight train and somehow leaving a trace in the freight train's trajectory that we could still measure. The precision required is almost supernatural. And yet he and his colleagues, team and friend, including past Gastelena Appriel, have built machines that can do exactly that. So if they're so good, if they're so sensitive, why can't they confirm a signal that's been reported since Bill Clinton was president. So we mentioned, though, some of the concerns about the Dama results or reproducibility

and confirmation. Why has it been so hard for other researchers to confirm or refute the Dama-Libra results? I think one thing, the mental point is you need to get very clean crystals, very pure crystals. If your crystal has some radioactive contaminants that continues emitting background, then Basically, you cannot see as clean as Dama can see. The technology actually accompanies maybe is not, you know, open to the public. So other people who want to use the same type crystals, for example, I believe Princeton University actually grow their own crystals for the SABER experiment. So if you were to meet a hypothetical student who was interested in working on Dama for their

PhD, how would you advise them? What would you say to them? Oh, working on Dharma or working on Sabah, for example, a confirmation. First, Dharma. I would advise students to say, look into the data, really understand the background at the lowest energy possible, and see if there's any systematic or other background that we haven't found, or the collaboration hasn't found. to see that can also produce a modulation signal. That could be a very large contribution to the community

if he still wanted to work on the time, I experiment. How does Xenons your project, how does it handle sharing data, making data public or accessible to the community? Does it or does it keep it proprietary? So, you know, the data we take, you know, that he mentioned, the pet bias of data, the initial day is very, you know, not noisy and full of, you know, contamination.

You have to understand all architecting in order to use that data. So even if I give to a public, it's typical to use. But we do all kinds of data selection cuts and eventually produce, you know, these selected events. And that we use them to produce so-called limits. We don't find dark matter. And these data, once we publish our paper, we describe all the methods, and these data are also attached to these papers, making them public.

So people, for example, want to check our signal, check our signal detecting efficiency. You can look at these data. If they want to use them to constrain other type of documental models, they can also use this data. And if people are interested in, you know, more experimental part of our, background, then I would, you know, welcome to join our collaboration. Yeah. Here's where the story takes an unexpected turn that, quite frankly, keeps physicists up at night.

While hunting for dark matter, Professor Nees team stumbled upon something they never intended to find. Particles streaming from the core of our sun, passing through your body right now, completely undetected. They filtered petabytes of data. They used machine learning and AI to identify patterns and found exactly 11, events out of millions of possibilities. The amount of haystack that needs to be thrown out to find that one needle is truly extraordinary. This is detective work at the level of individual atoms, and what they've discovered makes finding dark matter, unfortunately, even harder. What is the most significant source of contamination, our systematic effects,

both in the laboratory and in the cosmos, astrophysical systematics, and terrestrial system outings? I think mostly background, right? I mentioned, you know, the backgrounds coming from all kinds of sources from detector material and from astrophysical source like neutrinos. So in our current generation experiment, the most backgrounds coming from detector material, say radon in the xenon,

and it depends on what type of a signal you're looking for. But for our next generation experiment, solar neutrino will become one of the dominant background. You mentioned there was a recent detection and publication, in fact, I think, about the solar neutrino detector properties of xenon. Can you explain that result? So the sun produced abundant neutrinos, right, and from the PP fusion, and there's a reaction in chains. So they are producing different kind of neutrinos. We call them PEP neutrinole.

We call boron-8 neutrinos and different energy, different spectrums. And last year, the paper we actually read this is about observing about 12, 11 neutrino from so-called boron-8 neutrinos. And these neutrinos produce a nuclear coil in our detector, very low energy nuclear, like about KEV. and very difficult to detect.

And we managed to do all kind of analysis technique, including machine learning, trying to filter out all the noises. And eventually found 11, these kind of events. Out of total 37 events, we detected another 26 of backgrounds. And these are the results we call the first detection of solar neutrinos in the liquid xenon detector. And that makes our experiment in the future will be more difficult to observe dark matter around 6GV,

which produce the same type of spectrum as the boron-aid solar nitrogen or in our detect. Okay. Speaking of precision, Professor Ney is about to tell us about witnessing something that happens so rarely, it makes winning every single lottery on Earth look like the odds. of Mani Machado hitting a home run. We're talking about nuclear decay. Nuclear decay with a half-life, probability of reduction by half,

longer than the age of the universe. And Professor Ney and his team, well, they caught that happening multiple times. So if they can detect something with this impossible rarity, why does dark matter mystery elude them? About three years ago, when you were first on my podcast,

during COVID four years ago, maybe. Five years ago, I forgot. Oh, yeah, I remember that. It was a detection of a very rare decay or some very rare nuclear process. Can you explain that and what the latest findings are from your research on that? Strontium, maybe. Yeah, I remember. So there was several observations in the past five, six years.

One is so-called double electron capture of a xenon-124 element in the last. our detector. And that's a very rare decay, you know, electron capture is very often, but double electron capture, having two electron capture at the same time, it's very rare. The half-life of that process is 10 to the 22 years. It's very long. That's probably the longest half-life direct detector we detect directly in a detector. And at that time, I think we observed about three, four sigma, and then later, you know, we've given more data now, it's five, six, or even more than that. Other experiments like Pana X and I believe ALZ also see the signals later.

And this is just the data model process, just very difficult to detect. That's the double electron paper we can be observed. But I think one thing that we actually talked about is some excess signal coming from our very low-energy electron recall from a Zeno-one experiment. Yeah. So at a time, you know, actually grad student from UCST, King Chang Ye, and he's a professor. He and another student from in Chicago, they found some excess signals in our electron recall, not nuclear recall, election recall background. And trying to expand with all kinds of background we know,

and there's still the excess, you know. And, um, Eventually, we think maybe these could be some background we don't know. We didn't count into. For example, Tritian, that's weak. But that tritium must be very low. We couldn't detect them. So that's one possibility. But that could be also more exotic explanation.

Say the neutrinos may have a magnetic moment, that solar neutrino may have a magnet moment that can produce a higher rate than we expected. maybe solar axiom. So that's the paper we wrote and trying to explain the excess. We don't have you didn't have any conclusion, but that's some possibility for the excess. What you're about to hear is why I love

experimental physics. Professor Nees-teen thought they may have detected something exotic, possibly solar axions or neutrinos with magnetic moments, the kind of discovery that would rewrite textbooks. But then then they had to build a cleaner

detector and unfortunately for their signal, their possible Nobel Prize, well, it disappeared, perhaps for the time being only. But honestly, this is how good science works. It's exactly the kind of story that I love to tell, and that makes the 30-year Dama, Libra, controversy, so frustrating, but also so energizing. So later, you know, after Cook, during the Code will be, we assembled a xenon experiment. It was supposed larger, cleaner. we made a lot of F trying to remove for, you know,

to heat a detector before we actually feel xenon trying to remove this kind of trillion if there is anything exist, right? And when we start taking data and much lower background, we didn't, the excess is gone, right? We didn't find any excess. So that means, you know, the explanation of trillion could be the right explanation of explaining, not solar axiom or solar magnetic,

neutrinal magnetic moment. So that's like a kind of, I think, you know, for example, we mentioned about Dharma, right? If there's excess, you could explain with dark matter, but there could also be background. And in trying to do more experiment,

trying to prove or, you know, refute such hypothesis. And that's what we did from 0-1 tonne to 0-0-0-10. We claim a signal, and now we are looking, for example, when we detect, collect more data, continue to looking for solar neutrinos. How can a neutrino, which is neutral, have a magnetic moment? Well, in the standard model, a neutrino may not have a magnet moment, a very low, tiny, that we would never see, but there are some exotic theories. we understand a model that has a larger magnetic moment.

That's a physicist trying to see, if we see such kind of a large magnetic moment, that could be something new. And how does it compare to like Zeppelin and Lux and the other double beta decay, eutrinolus double bedded decay, which look for the electron spectrum? Right, there are different isotopes,

and for people using liquid xenon, that's the Xenon-136, like Naxo, collaboration, LZ collaboration, they all have this Xenon-136 elements and even dedicated, for example, Camden, Zand. But for LZ and Zeno and Ternon, the element, Xenon-136, it now detects not enough to get the same sensitivity as the dedicated

each normal double-beder experiment. But in the future, Xenon and LZ, and also the Darwin collaboration in Europe, we joined together to build a so-called next generation X-L-ZD experiment. They eventually contain 60 to 80 ton of liquid xenon, natural liquid xenon, and that will contain about 6 to 8 ton of Xenon-136 element. That will push the neutrinos with double-beded at a high-5-Zenoma to have to limit about 10-10 to the 27, 10 to 28 years.

Wow. And there will be a very sensitive experiment in that process as well. Dr. Brian Keating. Hello. These are the students, Bao, Xinjiang, and Dao Chen, they are three from Columbia University. Okay, welcome. Yeah, they are senior graduate students working on the Zeno.

Yeah, and you is my student. Oh, really? Yeah, we're future detectors. And, you know, in the, our documenta search experiment, xenon is located in the underground lab in Italy, Grand Saso underground in Italy, and it's a huge tank full of liquid xenon and total about six tons of the quinemeter in the target

waiting for dogmatic interactants. But here, you see it's a very tiny detector, right? So, but really similar, you know, we have a cry genus system, we have purification systems, We have data acquisition system. And here is a little detector we're trying to build for, you know, for different applications. Is that like a prototype or is that type?

Okay. It's also for dark matter or for neutrinos or some other. You want to use a for detecting react to neutrinos. You know, the neutrino can also interact with the detector producing signal very similar to dark matter would produce. So you're trying to use the same principle of detector. but Reacted neuterase very low energy and produce nuclear nuclear nuclear called a very difficult to detect.

Yeah, so I have another setup downstairs in a high bay, which is slightly bigger than this that will eventually be built as a reactor nuclear nuclear nuclear our xenon. The xenon is contained in these high-pressure bottles, and because they are expensive, so we don't want to lose time, and usually contains bottles, and we have about 10 kilograms in the lag right now. So I'm the Hall Street from Columbia University. Currently, I'm working on the Zin Aten experiment,

which is Cinerary. Yeah, so I'm working on the Zin Aung experiment, which is a dark matter direct detection experiment. It's located deep underground at LNGS in Italy. So our experiment has a lot of subsystem, but the core of the system is a so-called dual face liquid xenon temperature temperature or the TPC. So you know when the particle gas scatters inside the TPC with the xenon atom, it can generate

both scintillations and ionizations. So the scintillations with the prompt simulations can be detected by the top and bottom PMT arrays. In this system is silicon PM, the prompt simulation can be detected as the so-called S1. And we also have applied the drift field, so the ionize the electrons view drift upwards, and reach to the liquid gas interface, and finally be detected as S2. So from S1S2, we know quite a lot of information,

like we can reconstruct the events positions, we know the energy, we can buy the S1, S2, but most important as Professor Kachin just said, we need to discriminate our signals from the background. And in the WIMP search, the dominant background is from the beta decays or the gamma from the materials. So these background events are so-called nuclear electronic recall events. And because WIMP is expected to be electronic neutral, so it should be expected to be nuclear recall events.

So the key of the Zinn-Auntan experiment is to discriminate electronic recovery events from the nuclear recovery events. And for these two different types of events or the recoils, their S-1-S2 ratio are different. And this brings a lot of power to discriminate the signals from the background. In S-1 and S2, that's the self-interacto. Can you explain what S-1 and S-2 mean in this context? Yes, so the S2, S1, S2 mainly means, so in our analysis it mainly means the size of the paws.

So, you know, the S1 and S2 are both simulations, but the S2 synchioration is from the proportional, yeah, from the drifted electrons and it's proportional to the number of electrons. But anyways, these are both photons and be detected by the PMTs, and you have the waveforms from the PMTs. So in our analysis, the SMRAS2 URD means the size or the integrated area of this policies. For example, our primary goal is to observe the wind documentator and their signal is large, relatively large than the neutrino interactions. And without this trigonized system, we might not be able to observe those very low energy signals or the ST2-only analysis or ESP-only analysis without this trigonase. this trigonize you can just take a you know look at it here

I mentioned this is a so-called radon very radon reduced clean room that would be for the for building the next generation experiment so as I mentioned a radar is one of the Darwin background for us and for any low background dark matter or neutrinal experiment

and the radiance continued emanating from the materials, right? And so we want to make sure all the material put into our detector, he very much control in terms of radon emanation. So this is especially built clean room, and you see inside the oil, you know, metal coated, and make sure the energy is very, and even the air, you know, even in our normal air, there are radons, right? we have special radon removal system,

if you want to make a picture here. This we inherited from an experiment called the XO200, a new journalist double beta dig experiment that's, you know, measure neutrity, no myrana particles. And so this is now is retired and we use it to clean the air here and then pump the redone, remove the air into the clean.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this is Professor Liang Young's lab. Okay. And you made a quick tour. I know. And we'll see around. Yeah.

I'll get him next time. Yeah. Yeah. He's building some electronic redoubt. Sometimes you can beat swords into plowshares. We're about to see how the search for cosmic mysteries leads to very earthly applications, benefits, and truly, hope for us to wage peace. The Pentagon looked at this dark manner detection technology and saw

something else entirely, a way to monitor nuclear reactors from a distance, to verify treaty compliance without ever setting foot inside a facility. This is how basic research, fundamental research, can pay unexpected dividends. It's what happened in my field, the cosmic microwave background. We're building sensitive detectors to explore the wispy radiation from the Big Bang, eventually led to advancements in cell phone communications technology. Professor Nees project is funded by DARPA, the same agency that gave us the internet. We all know what a benefit that's been. This has a different type of benefit, one perhaps to help us seek peaceful resolutions to potential nuclear conflict.

This is the apparatus actually we are building and we call neutrino detection with xenon. We know the xenon detect now detects, the solar neutrinos, right? We want to use this detected technology for some application. For example, detecting a neutron from reactors. We can monitor the reactor view remotely, not very far, 10, 20 meters away. And the detectors set up like here, let me just open this.

So the principle is very much the same as a documentary detector. You build a cryogenic system, you have a detector vessel, And you have calibrations and then trying to purify the Xenal, more or less the same. And eventually you want to contain less than 100 kilograms in here, place a very close to a react core. And then we start to see a lot of reacting signals. Could you use this for like weapons detection or trees, violation of nuclear proliferation? That's the main purpose. Like you want to measure the components.

and a few in the nuclear reactors, you know, not, you know, from using neutrinos and to see the compositions making sure the component inside is not changed during some down period. Yeah, that's the eventual goal. So is this funded by DOV or? It's a DAPAR program, yeah. But yeah, I had a three-year program and, yeah, we built this set up for, yeah. So let me just, can I cut through? Yeah.

So there's 100 liters of it? Eventually, like 100 kilograms, we usually say. Okay, gram mass, yeah. And more or less this system is, yeah, we build, you know, based on the documentary technology. Yeah, and. And so what is your, is this his thesis? No, no, he's from Columbia.

He's a visiting theory. Yeah, this is actually. my former student postdoc helping build the system, and he already left, got a professor seen somewhere else, and now students are working using this setup actually to build a something useful for new channels. Wow, there you go. Yeah. Here's what we've learned today.

Here's what we've learned today. For 30 years, one experiment has claimed to detect dark matter. For 30 years, increasingly sophisticated detectors. have failed to confirm the Donnell Libra claim. We've seen technology so precise it can catch neutrinos from the sun and witness rare nuclear decays that, on average, take longer than the age of our universe.

But dark matter itself, well, it's still invisible, still undetected, still undefeated, still the greatest mystery in modern cosmology. 85% of the universe is missing or made of something we've never seen. That should be humbling. But it should also thrill you, because if most of reality is still hidden, imagine what else we can discover.

If you want to see this technology in action and detail, check out the documentary on Professor Keating Experiments channel. Links in the description. Or click here. The search for dark matter isn't just about finding particles. It's about building the tools that reveal the invisible architecture of reality itself. And that search? Well, my friends, that's just beginning.

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