Dark matter, gravitational waves, and fifty years of looking outward.
Kishore Hari
July 20, 2026
Greetings science fans!
I was visiting friends in Seattle over the weekend and had the good fortune to get an impromptu tour of the Nuclear Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington, home to two of the most ambitious experiments to study dark matter.
The first is ADMX, the Axion Dark Matter Experiment. The QCD axion, originally proposed in the late 1970s to solve a problem in particle physics, was quickly identified as a promising dark matter candidate. ADMX searches for axions the way you might search for a radio station: using a strong magnetic field and a cold, precisely tuned microwave cavity, it scans across frequency bands that correspond to the possible masses of the particle, waiting for axions to convert into detectable photons. It is patient, methodical work, looking for a whisper from a particle that makes up most of the mass of the universe, but has never been directly detected.
The second is the LEGEND project, which is hunting for something equally profound: neutrinoless double-beta decay, a process that would occur only if neutrinos are their own antiparticles. If observed, this would demonstrate that the neutrino is its own antiparticle and could be the key to understanding how our universe formed, transforming how scientists understand matter, mass, and the evolution of everything we can see around us. LEGEND-200 is currently taking data at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, while the next stage, LEGEND-1000, with a total detector mass of one ton of enriched germanium, is under preparation. The scale of these collaborations is genuinely humbling – hundreds of researchers across dozens of institutions, all chasing a signal that may take decades to find, if it exists at all. Seeing it up close is a reminder of what big team science looks like when the question is big enough.
And July 20, is itself a good day to think about humanity’s long patience with the cosmos. Fifty years ago, NASA’s Viking 1 touched down safely on Mars at 7:53 a.m. EDT, giving humanity our first ground-level view of the Red Planet. The twin robotic spacecraft conducted experiments to detect life and, although they didn’t provide conclusive answers, sparked a revolution in space study. This week is a great opportunity to learn about some amazing spacefaring exploits that are only possible through persistent exploration. Wednesday’s Astronomy on Tap, Thursday’s After Dark at the Exploratorium, and Saturday’s gravitational wave talk at the San Jose Astronomical Society each offer a different window into that same spirit of slow, cumulative discovery.
Science at its best is an act of extraordinary patience.
— Kishore
My picks for the week:
- Astronomy on Tap San Francisco Wednesday, July 22, Standard Deviant Brewing, San Francisco
- After Dark: Out of This World – Thursday, July 23, Exploratorium, San Francisco
- Hunt for Gravitational Waves: A Story Spanning the Frequencies of Space-Time Saturday, July 25, San Jose Astronomical Association, San Jose
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