http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/science/space/18dark.html

An international team of physicists working in the bottom of an old iron mine in Minnesota said Thursday that they might have registered the first faint hints of a ghostly sea of subatomic particles known as dark matter long thought to permeate the cosmos.


A dark matter detector

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/1...r-particles.ars

Two talks from members of the CDMS consortium, which runs a detector designed to spot the presence of a likely dark matter candidate, have indicated that they've spotted two events that bear the signatures of something called a neutralino, a hypothesized particle that has many of the properties of dark matter.



Confirmation of the particles would also constitute the first evidence for a new feature of nature, called supersymmetry, that physicists have been seeking as avidly as the astronomers have been seeking dark matter. It is central to theoretical efforts like string theory, which unify all of the forces of nature into one mathematical expression.

Anything significant came out of this run?

If they did indeed detect a neutralino, then we'd better see what else we can predict with MSSM.

How come the physicist or astronaut just collect the particles while in the space to do analysis ?

dark matter is very small. Smaller than the atoms. They must use a special device to analyse it.

It's not about particle size being smaller than an atom or what-not. It's about what's the particle's mass, at what energy levels can we find it, and how does it interact with other matter or other particles. Only after knowing or guessing how it would interact, what mass-energy we expect to find it at, etc. only then can we find ways to capture direct or indirect evidence of its existence (or lack thereof)

but it is sub-atomic in size

or else it couldn't penetrate the thick layer of earth into the underground mineshaft

one thing that I can't stop thinking is this:

there are matter

there are anti-matter

now ... if this dark matter thing is proven to be true, is there an "anti-dark-matter" thingy out there?

That's enough to gimme a headache for a life time

isn't dark matter and anti-matter the same?

whatever it, the thought of the string finally proven is getting me all excited! Extra dimensions and the theory of everything. the beauty that is the universe

anti matter = opposite of matter and annihilate each other upon contact.

dark matter = matter that should exist according to equation, but no one found them yet. a place holder.

This depends whether we assume dark matter is baryonic or not (or both, in that case dark matters), or scientists term it simpler as hot or cold.

Impressive, it seems like scientists can predict the future by just calculations...
So this dark matter is a sub particle like a neutron or proton?

dark matter is not a sub particles... it basically a new entity beside the molecule, atom etc...