South Dakota is the current focal point in the search for dark matter.

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What's regarded as the world's most sensitive dark matter detector was lowered earlier last month into a 70,000-gallon water tank nearly a mile beneath the Earth's surface, shrouding it in enough insulation to hopefully isolate dark matter from the cosmic radiation that makes it impossible to detect above ground.


What's the deal with dark matter?


What's the history of this experiment?

The search in South Dakota began in 2003 after the Homestake Gold Mine in the Black Hills' Lead, S.D., shuttered for good. Scientists called dibs on the site, and in July, after years of fundraising and planning, the Large Underground Xenon experiment detector moved into the Sanford Underground Research Facility, 4,850 feet below the earth's surface.

Carefully submerging the delicate detector into its final home – a water-filled vat that's 20 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter – took more than two months, a graduate student said

What's next?

Keeping the water and xenon pristine will help remove what scientists called “fake sources” – or stuff that they have seen before, such as radiation, that could serve as false alarms in their efforts to detect dark matter.

Once the data start to flow, it'll take a month or two before the detector is sensitive enough to claim the “most-sensitive” title.

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