CORTEZ, Colo. — In a sand-colored metal building in remote southwest Colorado, the quest to unravel one of the most perplexing questions about the nature of the universe looks like this: a bedroom-sized tangle of pipes, gauges, wires and cylinders along with two computers, a stepladder, a big fan and several crates of canary yellow tanks.

This is a no-frills, low-thrill but very important part of a potentially universe-shaking project called Darkside-50.

U.S. Department of Energy and Princeton University scientists are harvesting argon gas here in the middle of a Kinder Morgan compressor plant linked to wells that dot this area. They hope it is going to be the medium that might finally “show” particle physicists the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of our universe …

So here’s the basic lowdown about dark matter: Around 95 percent of the universe can’t be seen. It doesn’t emit or absorb light or electromagnetic radiation like the stars, gas and dust that are visible. But this unseen matter is hypothesized to be there because otherwise the universe doesn’t add up. There is a discrepancy between the mass of visible objects and their gravitational force. In the simplest of terms, we could go spinning off our yoga mats and flagstone patios and into space if there weren’t more matter than can be seen. MORE …