Tilting at Windmills?: The Relentless Hunt for Dark Matter

Dark matter does not emit, radiate, or absorb light, but most models predict that dark matter particles should—on rare occasions—interact with ordinary matter. Since the late 1980s, physicists have been deploying experiments deep underground in an effort to detect the gentle impacts of individual particles of dark matter. Over the past fifteen years or so, the collective sensitivity of these experiments has been increasing at an exponential rate, doubling each year or so on average. This staggering rate makes Moore’s Law seem stagnant in comparison.