(Story producer & post supervisor - Vice Media)

In the over two-decades-long search for dark matter, scientists so far have come up short. In recent years though, construction of new experiments and upgrades to already existing detectors are giving new hope that we’re closer than ever to understanding dark matter.

One of those new efforts is SABRE, an international collaboration that will house multiple detectors working in tandem in the southern and northern hemispheres: two at Italy’s Gran Sasso National Laboratory, and another at an underground lab in an Australian gold mine.

In episode two of The Most Unknown, Motherboard travels to Gran Sasso National Laboratory with physicist Davide D’Angelo and geomicrobiologist Jennifer Macalady to get an early look at SABRE’s latest phase of development.