Sam Eriksen

“We understand our detector and the backgrounds so well that even a single outstanding event, like the one we found, is important.”

Sam Eriksen · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-02

The team spent months understanding possible causes of background events before identifying a single unexplained interaction.

“We expect dark matter events to be extremely rare, so only a handful could mark the first detection of WIMP dark matter,”

Sam Eriksen · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-02

Because WIMP-matter interactions are expected to be extremely rare, only a few detections could confirm the existence of WIMP dark matter.

“This was a detailed study in a region we hadn't explored within this dataset, and we spent months of additional effort to understand all the possible causes of background events,”

Sam Eriksen · said date not stated · reported 2026-09-02

A LUX-ZEPLIN data analysis showed a single particle interaction that scientists cannot explain with known background signals.