Thanks to two researchers at the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, Space.com reports, we might soon be able to finally take a closer look at dark matter:
Now, after sifting through observations of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, two researchers think they’ve found evidence of the annihilation of dark matter particles in powerful explosions.
“Nothing we tried besides dark matter came anywhere close to being able to accommodate the features of the observation,” Dan Hooper, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., and the University of Chicago, told SPACE.com. “It’s always hard to be sure there isn’t something you just haven’t thought of. But I’ve talked to a lot of experts and so far I haven’t heard anything that was a plausible alternative.”
Hooper conducted the analysis with Lisa Goodenough, a graduate student at New York University.
…[A] signal of gamma-rays at the very center of the galaxy that was brighter than expected. Hooper and Goodenough tested many models to explain what could be creating this light. They ultimately concluded it must be caused by dark matter particles that are packed in so densely that they are destroying each other and releasing energy in the form of light.