What we know about dark matter sounds like the punchline to a joke: what is invisible, everywhere, and constitutes 80% of everything in existence? So to better understand this elusive material, a collaboration of researchers from around the world launched a balloon experiment called General Antiparticle Spectrometer, or GAPS, in Antarctica on December 16, 2025. Flying 22 miles above the earth's remotest continent, the balloon will search for negatively charged anti-particles, capitalizing on the unique magnetic properties of the earth's poles.
Helming this experiment is the department's very own Chuck Hailey, principal investigator, and Kerstin Perez, deputy principal investigator. With major funding from institutions like National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation, the GAPS program spent years developing technology to identify whether low-energy anti-nuclei really do rain down on us from space. Breakthroughs on this matter (pun intended) could be a defining moment for the field of physics in the twenty-first century. As Perez says in the video, "Dark matter is the invisible material that's holding the universe together."
Follow the progress of the GAPS balloon in real-time here.