Description
Recent decades attest to unprecedented developments in experimental science. Registration of gravitational waves, detecting neutrino oscillations, and charting the cosmic microwave background are but a few examples. Yet, at the same time, some of the old mysteries, e.g., the existence and nature of Dark Matter, stubbornly defy explanation. In my presentation, I’ll illustrate the importance and relevance of basic research with ALICE – the very successful heavy-ion experiment studying the quark-gluon plasma at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and mention the first results from indirect Dark Matter searches in the Pyhäsalmi mine in Finland.