... it's also frozen to near-absolute zero

[topbit]

Yeah, you know who this is for.

At the heart of Abancens’ team’s detector, which is called a scintillating bolometer and resembles a prop from The Golden Compass, is a crystal so pure it can conduct the energy ostensibly generated when a particle of dark matter strikes the nucleus of one of its atoms

Comments

[twisted_times]

As it says in the article, the real problem will be scaling it up to "to a half-ton working model". O_o

[n_g_neer]

Growing crystals of that kind of purity and without flaws/defects is going to be a toughie! Even if thay used a chemical with large nucleic radius, it would have to be something pretty low down in the Periodic Table. Hmmm interesting challenge!