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    Dark Matter possibly discovered


    Scientists in Tokyo may have detected the first actual hard evidence of dark matter. I'm so happy to exist in the timeline where we have the first image of a blackhole and possibly the confirmation of dark matter. I can't get over this. (Link in comments)

    https://i.redd.it/ofgcpvyuvi3g1.jpeg

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    39 Comments

    6. mrpointyhorns on

      I think we are going to get more evidence of dark matter during the rest of the century. But I am hoping timescape cosmology keeps getting more evidence doing away with dark energy

    13. 7thcolumn18 on

      That’s a big ‘may have’ which means nothing to the scientific community. Headlines like this contribute (rightly so) to the distrust of media and science.

    16. perestroika12 on

      The 511 kev annihilation radiation theory has been floating around for at least a decade at this point. The problem isn’t seeing it, it’s proving that dark matter can actually cause it and it’s the true source.

      Aligning the emissions to the halo isn’t enough unfortunately and previous examples have also had problems completely eliminating possibilities.

    19. Legitimate_Grocery66 on

      reminds me of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Tlescope which’ll be launching soon. that’ll help break more ground with dark matter.

    20. Project8521 on

      There’s a joke in there about people having such a huge backlog of shows to watch these days, but I can’t seem to find it.

    22. ILikestuff55 on

      Can someone explain this to me like I’m 5?

      Why is dark matter such a big deal and what can we learn from it?

    24. stargazerAMDG on

      So from my quick read through the paper, It looks like this is just a paper trying to make sense of the excess in the galactic diffuse gamma emission. I don’t think this is a discovery of dark matter, just a lot of data being fit to a model that may or may not be covering all details. There are many papers on the various excesses seen around the galactic center and its neighboring regions and all of them with wildly different morphologies. I haven’t spent enough time reading this one to say how novel this idea is.

    25. cooking_is_overrated on

      May. Perhaps. Could. For such smart people, scientists are never certain enough to say for sure but always leave themselves an out. Guess their government grant is up for renewal and time to put out a clickbait announcement so they don’t have to get real jobs

    28. diaphanousphoton on

      I’m an astro-particle physicist. This is NOT a discovery of dark matter. In fact, from the summary, this just looks like a re-analysis of a signal we’ve known about for ~15 years. The Fermi telescope detected an excess of gamma rays relative to models physicists have constructed of expected galactic diffuse gamma-ray emission. This excess is potentially consistent with annihilating WIMP dark matter… or some other astrophysical source that is difficult to resolve, like pulsars in the galactic center. The other option is that the models that physicists have been using for these comparisons aren’t fully correct (this is actually what my current research focuses on!)

    29. the_nin_collector on

      Sorry, if this is a dumb question. But isn’t it possible this is something totally different, not even theroiszied yet, and they are simply trying to say it dark matter.

      I remember there have more than a few things they said this is dark matter, or this is because it’s being affected by dark matter, and only find out… nope it was something else.

    30. cornbread2420 on

      Where’s that cool Astronomer dude to weigh in and explain the significance of this for us simpletons

    31. willdone on

      Someone please explain how this couldn’t just be that the electron population or radiation field is mismodeled in a way that leaves a halo-shaped residual peaking around ~20 GeV?

    34. ytman on

      Neat if true and a cool thing. Doesn’t mame me more happy for this shitty timeline. Planetary matters impact my life more than astrophysics. But I’m glad you are happy.

    36. Horneal on

      Dark matter and dark energy is just BS, some science just can’t tell truth, they wrong about it for 100 years 

    37. Sao_Gage on

      WIMPs are “weakly interacting massive particles” IIRC, yes? Just a descriptor more than a specific thing? So dark matter by default could be described as a WIMP.

      This snippet implies they detected the gamma ray emission from the predicted particles that appear to be consistent with dark matter but I’m not comprehending what that particle is?

      It’s crazy how complex astrophysics and quantum physics gets, I genuinely salute the people capable of discerning this stuff.

    38. Nicaddicted on

      The required annihilation cross section is higher than what many dark matter models typically expect, higher than constraints derived from other observations like dwarf galaxies

      so IMO when the signal depends heavily on on a specific halo profile shape that is not observationally confirmed, the dark matter interpetation is spectulative but I also don’t have PHD so who knows.

      Edit; Also residual excess appearing after subtracting uncertain components is not evidence of new physics, it reflects a model of imperfections.

    39. Starks on

      Fermi is the only telescope that can even see this and we still lack MeV telescopes for suspected DM processes. Way too early to celebrate.