How Dark Matter Physicists Score Deals on Liquid Xenon
How Dark Matter Physicists Score Deals on Liquid Xenon
Science, Spoken · SpokenLayer
January 11, 20187m 27s
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Show Notes
If you want to build and run a $70 million dark matter detector, you're going to have a hefty shopping list. You'll need to buy hundreds of photomultiplier tubes, set up elaborate electronics, and pay graduate students, for starters. And 20 percent of your cash is going to go to just one thing: xenon gas. You'll need 200 steel bottles of the stuff, purified from the Earth’s atmosphere, at a price that can fluctuate wildly around $100,000 a bottle.
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