Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-work-of-WIMPs? dept.

A small but distinctive signal in X-rays from the Milky Way could be key to proving the existence of dark matter. That is the claim of US scientists who analysed the energy spectrum of X-rays gathered by Nasa's Chandra satellite. They found more X-ray photons with a particular energy than would be expected if they were produced only by familiar processes. Those photons could in fact have been generated by the decay of dark matter particles, say the researchers.

This is not the first time that scientists have seen extra photons with an energy of about 3,500 electronvolts (3.5 keV) in the spectra recorded by X-ray satellites. But previously, according to Kevork Abazajian, a cosmologist at the University of California, Irvine, it was not clear whether the bump, or "line", created by the photons in the otherwise smooth spectrum was merely an instrumental artefact. "This result is very exciting," said Dr Abazajian, who was not involved in the research. "It makes it more likely that the line is due to dark matter."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Geezer on Saturday February 04 2017, @07:40AM

    by Geezer (511) on Saturday February 04 2017, @07:40AM (#462794)

    It's just a hypothetical line of thought, like Noah's arc.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3