Scientists May Have Finally Detected a Hint of Dark Matter, the Mysterious, Invisible Stuff That Holds the Universe Together

A South Dakota-based instrument built to detect theoretical dark matter particles has sensed a particle interaction that’s difficult to explain with known phenomena. But more data is needed to confirm that the strange substance—which scientists have never directly observed—is, indeed, the culprit

Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent

September 8, 2026 11:23 a.m.

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A strange, invisible substance is thought to act as cosmic glue, holding the universe together. The stuff, called dark matter, makes up an estimated 85 percent of the universe’s matter. But scientists have never directly seen the mysterious material and are not sure about what it is.

Now, however, an underground instrument in South Dakota has recorded an odd event that may have been triggered by a dark matter particle. While the physicists involved say they are not claiming to have actually seen dark matter, the findings might represent a monumental step in finally observing and confirming the presence of dark matter.

It “could be the first hint of a dark matter observation,” Sam Eriksen, a particle physicist at the University of Bristol in England, tells Reuters’ Will Dunham.

Eriksen and colleagues announced their findings on September 1 at the 2026 TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Japan. The researchers also posted a non-peer-reviewed study on the preprint server arXiv, and they plan to submit it to the journal Physical Review Letters, according to a statement.

Dark matter is invisible. It doesn’t reflect, absorb or emit light. So how do scientists know it’s there?

They can study the way it influences normal matter, the stuff we can see like planets, stars and people. For example, when light passes by a large galaxy, the electromagnetic radiation bends way more than it should, given the galaxy’s detectable mass—hinting that some extra material is hiding within it. It simply remains unseen by the world’s current scientific instruments.

One theory posits that dark matter consists of what are called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, which rarely come into contact with the visible world. Scientists are hunting for these theoretical particles with a few different detectors, including the South Dakota-based one that’s part of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment.

The LZ detector consists of a giant tank with several tons of liquid xenon. If an incoming WIMP interacts with the element, their intermingling shoots off a flash of light and electrons. Sensors pick up that information, which can tell scientists different characteristics about the particle, like its mass. The tank sits almost one mile underground to protect it from particles like cosmic radiation that might cause false positives.

Eriksen and colleagues found the newly reported particle interaction among 220 days’ worth of data collected between March 2023 and April 2024. At first, they’d searched for weak signals from the simplest kinds of hypothesized WIMP interactions. But then, they broadened their search to higher energy interactions, revealing a strange event that’s hard to explain with normal matter.

If dark matter is indeed the culprit, the responsible WIMP’s mass is probably more than 200 times that of a proton. That’s a big if, though. Statistical analyses suggest there’s around a 0.5 percent chance that the interaction can be explained by other known dynamics, so the results didn’t reach the statistical threshold to be considered a discovery. Further research can help clarify whether the interaction came from dark matter or background noise.

“At this point, we’re interested to get feedback from the wider scientific community,” study co-author Richard Gaitskell, a physicist at Brown University, tells the New York Times’ Katrina Miller. “After doing so much work internally, we felt ready to talk to the rest of the world about the results.”

The rest of the world is now watching—and weighing in with mixed reactions.

“It’s only one event. So who knows what’s really going on here,” Dan Hooper, a theoretical physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tells Science News’ Emily Conover.

Theoretical physicist Nicole Bell of the University of Melbourne in Australia agrees. While it’s an “interesting observation,” it’s still “very early days,” she tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Jacinta Bowler and Ellen Phiddian.

Meanwhile, theoretical astrophysicist Katherine Freese of the University of Texas at Austin tells the Times that she is “super, super excited,” adding that the team’s data analysis techniques were “phenomenal.”

“It’s like seeing a present under the Christmas tree,” Wick Haxton, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, tells Science’s Adrian Cho. “You’re hoping it’s something good and you’re excited no matter what.”

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.