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Researchers "are really searching in the dark in a way," said Harvard University physicist Avi Loeb, who is not part of the LUX team. "We have no clue. We don't know what this matter is." Even more so than the recently discovered Higgs boson, dark matter is central to the universe. About one-quarter of the cosmos is comprised of dark matter -- five times that of the ordinary matter that makes up everything we see. Dark matter is often defined by what it isn't: something that can be seen and something that is energy. Scientists are pretty sure dark matter exists, but they are not certain what it is made of or how it interacts with ordinary matter. It is considered vital to all the scientific theories explaining how the universe is expanding and how galaxies move and interact. "We know there's stuff out there that is something else, and that makes these searches hugely important because we know we are missing most of the universe," said Neal Weiner, director of the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University, who was not part of the search. The lack of success could mean the instruments are inadequate, Gaitskell and McKinsey said. Or, considering the lack of knowledge about what dark matter really is, "perhaps we're going in the wrong direction," Loeb said. ___ Online: Sanford lab: http://sanfordlab.org/
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