A Dark Matter Dream T. M. A. Fruth A note from the author: Dark matter makes up about 85% of matter in the universe. Without it, the universe would look very different today, and we would not be here to observe it. Understanding its nature is a scientific priority, allowing us to understand how we got to where we are today. Yet, answering the question of how the discovery of dark matter would change the world is complicated. To write this story, I allowed myself to dream. Please take it as what it is, a piece of fiction imagined in conversation one evening. Maybe one day, there could be some truth to it. Or it might just stay a dream. Lead (South Dakota, US), February 2023 Her panic is rising proportionally to the pressure in the detector. On a plot, the two would be perfectly parallel by now. What an unhelpful thought; Jess scolds herself and tries to adjust the temperature of the cooling instrumentation again. It has no effect. At this rate, we will start venting xenon into the underground cavern in less than two minutes. The screen in front of her goes blurry from her tears, and the electronic voice of the constant alarm is ringing in her ears. This is it. This is the end of this experiment. Why does this have to happen on her shift? Her career will end at 23 before she even finishes her PhD. Jess opens her eyes, heart racing. It takes her a moment to realise that it was just a dream. A nightmare, probably triggered by the stress of the past months. She was so excited when she started her PhD at the University of Liverpool a little over a year ago. She would be part of an international collaboration trying to solve the dark matter puzzle. She would get a chance to figure out what 85% of the matter in the universe was made from. But she did not imagine that they would find it. Let alone in her first year of PhD! At first, they thought it was an issue with the analysis; then, as the signal grew stronger over time, the preferred theory was a calibration source gone rogue. It was just too good to be true. But the signal passed all the tests, all the additional data quality cuts, and all the checks. And today is the day that the world will find out. There have been rumours for weeks about a discovery, but there were rumours before. This time it's the real deal. A simultaneous conference by their experiment in South Dakota and their colleagues in Italy – two independent experiments seeing the same signal. How lucky that her first onsite shift coincides with the announcement. She finally saw the detector four weeks ago during her first day at the underground lab. Well, she only saw the outside of the water tank containing the detector. The underground location and the water tank shield the detector against all the other radiation in the environment, so no chance to see inside. But still, it felt special being so close to what she had been working on for a year now. A few hours later, she finds herself in the back of the meeting room, which has been converted into a makeshift conference room. She has never seen so many people at the lab. The presentation has just ended, and the room is buzzing with excitement. Her phone vibrates— a message from Brian. Brian has become a good friend over the past month. He is a data analyst for a mining company and has been part of the little science bubble they form here. They weren't allowed to tell him about the discovery before, but clearly, he knew something big was happening. She reads his message. So - what does this mean for us, for our daily lives?
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