Here are the first traces of dark matter – The Republic

THE MATTER dark perhaps not so dark. Scientists launched on his trail begins to show the first impressions. We only know of this enigmatic substance that makes up 25% of the universe and which exerts its force of gravity on the galaxies of the universe. Basta. Being able to steal other details from his reluctance is one of the most important missions of science today.

A first signal light may come from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), an instrument mounted on the outside of the International Space Station from 2011 . Orbiting the Earth, Ams sifts cosmic rays that sweep the universe in the form of high-energy particles. In his sieve could be finished the “golden nuggets”. Ams fact has garnered much more than expected antimatter: positrons (positively charged electrons) and antiprotons (protons with negative charge). One of the possible explanations is that this is the “debris” of the clashes between dark matter particles. “We are at the gates of a new discovery. Or a new mystery,” said Rolph Heuer, director of CERN in Geneva where data Ams were presented yesterday. “This unique detector, which Italy has contributed significantly, is leading us to the threshold of a possible major discovery,” confirmed Fernando Ferroni, president of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, which together contributed Italian Space Agency realize Ams.

In addition to the heavenly bodies, dark matter exerts its force of gravity on light also. The image of the bright galaxies more distant then arrives on Earth slightly skewed relative to their actual position. Measure these distortions with extreme meticulousness is the mission of the project “Dark Energy Survey” which yesterday published the first map of dark matter in the universe of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . The atlas covers only 3% of the sky: to wait until 2018 for it to be completed. The same journal yesterday was also described the first “mug shot” left by the dark matter in the cataclysmic battle between four galaxies, which occurred 1.3 billion light years from Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope? and the Earth’s Very Large Telescope, located in Chile, they discovered that the invisible mass, “shaken” by the impact, has lagged behind, to 5 thousand light years away compared to the tangle of galaxies. “We had always thought that dark matter if they themselves around there, indifferent. But it is not so,” said study author, Richard Massey of the University of Durham.

“Put together, the three data, however, do not give a coherent picture, “complains Gianfranco Bertone, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam. “The data in Ams could be explained in a different way from the dark matter. The map of the Dark Energy Survey gives us exactly the expected results. The clash of galaxies instead opens the door to a dark matter that does not interact only through gravity, but also by other forces. ” Even when it seems about to be, the invisible part of the universe that does not sow new puzzles on his way.

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International Space Station

cosmic rays

Italian space agency

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