DARK AND DEEP

摘要

As peter redl and a colleague prepare to enter the clean room that houses the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search detectors, they take the usual precautions. Blue bunny suits? Check. Caps and booties? Check. Electronic gizmos? Left in the office. Bananas? Nowhere in sight. "If you put a banana next to the detectors, the radioactive decay of the potassium will cause about 2,000 events per minute," explains Redl, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. "So we're not allowed to eat bananas." When you're searching for the most bashful of cosmic particles, you can't be too careful.