This is the truth. I'm Jonathan Mitchell.

Today's story is called Dark Manor. It was inspired by one of our listeners named

Christopher Tunnel. He donated to the radio to it be a kickstar last fall. And if remember

one of the gifts we gave for donating a certain amount was that we would make a story based

on your life. And so this piece is our way of thanking Christopher for donating. We talked

for a couple hours by Skype. And it's really this is Christopher. At the moment whenever

you talk to me I think I'm listening to podcasts. And it turns out he has a really interesting

job. He's a physicist at a Dark Manor detector in Italy. So it's under a mountain in Italy

but you can actually drive into it. And Barry deep beneath the mountain is a tank filled

with liquid xenon that they hope will detect dark matter. I think it'd be one of the biggest

discoveries in a hundred years. It's why I do this type of stuff. So one of our writers

Diana McCory talked to Christopher again on her own and she wrote the story we're going

to hear today. Okay now for today's story. This is called Dark Manor. If you look out

at the universe you might not notice anything is missing but actually most of the universe

is missing. If you compare the amount of matter you can see to the amount that should

be there you'd be off by about 85%. Scientists call that missing stuff. Dark matter. Now

what knows what it is or why we can't see it all we know is that without it the universe

would fall apart. So scientists built a device they thought might detect it and they wrapped

it in copper and lead and buried it inside a mountain. So only dark matter could reach

it. Good morning Professor Kelly. Why didn't you tell me? Well I just found it. Dr. Thompson

late night again. Oh yeah. The detector itself is a tank no bigger than you and it's filled

with very cold liquid xenon. Xenon particles don't seem to like other particles they bounce

...