ENW-KLEIN for dark mater research Colijn and Postma

The XENON1T detector which has collected a large amount of data in the search fo
The XENON1T detector which has collected a large amount of data in the search for dark matter.

Even tough 25 percent of the universe is made out of dark matter, it has never been observed in the lab. Physicists Auke-Pieter Colijn and Marieke Postma have obtained an ENW-KLEIN grant from NWO to search for hidden signatures of dark matter within existing data.

The NWO Domain Board Science has awarded a total of fifteen applications in the Open Competition Domain Science-KLEIN. The competition is broad - besides the proposal by Colijn and Postma, other proposals were awarded on themes varying from the behavior of proteins involved in DNA repair to magnetic car parks and superconductors. The KLEIN grants are intended for innovative, high-quality, fundamental research and studies involving matters of scientific urgency. The grant allows Colijn and Postma to employ two PhD students as part of their research project.

Searching for dark matter in the XENON waste

The search for dark matter in the universe has been ongoing for several decades, so far without success. However, it may well be that we do not find dark matter with current experiments because we are simply looking for the wrong signatures. Colijn and Postma propose to "recycle" data of the XENONnT experiment to look for Dark Matter with properties different from what we would normally expect.