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An Argentine laboratory takes impossible photos and searches for dark matter 2 km underground

It is the first national complex completely dedicated to the use of Skipper-CCD devices, a revolutionary sensor that works at 130 degrees below zero. One year after its opening, Lambda's directors reviewed the new applications.

  • 29/08/2023 • 02:06

The Argentine Laboratory for Measurements of Low Detection Threshold and its Applications (Lambda) advances in unprecedented research for the country that ranges from taking photos in the deepest darkness to searching for the dark matter that exists in the universe and crosses the human body, and to A year after its inauguration, it carries out experiments with data taken in a Canadian mine 2,000 meters underground, a place that allows one to listen to "the murmur" of this mysterious matter.

 

This is the first Argentine laboratory dedicated entirely to the use of Skipper-CCD devices, a revolutionary sensor that works at 130 degrees below zero and can count the electrons in each pixel by one to record images with very high precision.

 

Located in Hall 1 of Ciudad Universitaria, the laboratory depends on the Department of Physics of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Institute of Physics of Buenos Aires (Ifiba-Conicet).

 

In turn, it has a close collaboration with Fermilab, a renowned national laboratory in the United States that provided Lambda with ultrasensitive sensors that are not commercialized, so very few countries have this technology that did not exist six years ago.