Scientists have finally ‘seen’ dark matter for the first time - UPI.com
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More than 100 years after its existence was predicted, scientists report that they have, for the first time, seen dark matter.
    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      36·
      22 hours ago

      They’re seeing gamma rays from suspected dark matter collisions—that’s actually more substantially accurate than I was expecting.

    • BallShapedMan@lemmy.world
      182·
      23 hours ago

      After reading the article I would call it interesting but very far from settled. Your doubt is properly placed 🤣

      • magiccupcake@lemmy.world
        2·
        13 hours ago

        In the field this is actually refered to as direct observation. It’s confusing for someone not familiar with the jargon as it is very similar to direct detection.

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
        102·
        21 hours ago

        but then they would be decent

        Lmao, what? No, if they put “indirectly” in the headline, then they’d be just as decent but actively wrong about it being the first time. We’ve detected dark matter in plenty of indirect ways, from the Bullet Cluster to the angular velocity of galaxies. I don’t think you understand how often particle physicists observe things based on predicted properties (such as “this decays into that”) rather than something we see “directly”.

        Dark matter is dark matter because it only interacts gravitationally with “normal” matter and energy, and we’ve already observed that gravitational interaction. So what’s your standard for not qualifying a dark matter observation as “indirect”? Did you want two dark matter black holes colliding? Did you want the scientists to magically change how electromagnetism works?

        It’s fine if you don’t think this is an observation of dark matter at all, but “indirect” is needlessly splitting hairs in this field. You can read the journal article – at least the abstract – and see what the evidence is.

  • neutronbumblebee@mander.xyzEnglish
    9·
    20 hours ago

    Extra high energy particles too. So next time we get hit by secondary particles from a cosmic ray we know what’s to blame. On the other hand the planet might not all be here without the extra gravity from dark matter so it’s still all good. Radiation induced Cancer is horrible but having a decent sized planet is a definite plus

  • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
    10·
    22 hours ago

    Huh, actually kinda amazing, and def a bit more than the “typically bs” title hinted.

    Fifteen years of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data in the halo region of the Milky Way (MW) are analyzed to search for gamma rays from dark matter annihilation. . . . A statistically significant halo-like excess is found with a spectral peak around 20 GeV, while its flux is consistent with zero below 2 GeV and above 200 GeV. Examination of the fit residual maps indicates that a spherically symmetric halo component fits the map data well. The radial profile agrees with annihilation by the smooth NFW density profile, and may be slightly shallower than this, especially in the central region. . . . The halo excess spectrum can be fitted by annihilation with a particle mass mχ ∼ 0.5–0.8 TeV and cross section 〈συ〉 ∼ (5–8) × 10-25 cm3 s-1 for the bb̅ channel. This cross section is larger than the upper limits from dwarf galaxies and the canonical thermal relic value, but considering various uncertainties, especially the density profile of the MW halo, the dark matter interpretation of the 20 GeV “Fermi halo” remains feasible. The prospects for verification through future observations are briefly discussed.