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Dark Matter Discovered Near Solar System?
gpronger writes "The ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter) has potentially discovered the presence of dark matter close (only 3000 light-years) to our solar system. The system detected a large-amount of high energy cosmic rays which match the theoretical signature of dark matter annihilating itself. The universe is believed to be composed of about 25% dark matter, but there has been little evidence of it. This discovery, if correct, would be the first."
The paper was published in Nature , but it requires a subscription to see beyond the abstract.
I just logged in and got a first post.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Doesn't a Calorimeter measure calories? I know with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up everybody is going to be eating too much. I guess I should walk to work to burn off some.
Psh. You could travel that far in less than a year at Warp 9.9.
*ROFL* Parent is definitely on topic and underrated. See the xkcd link above.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Link to Full Article
,300â"800 GeV, which indicates a nearby source of energetic
Abstract:
Galactic cosmic rays consist of protons, electrons and ions, most of
which are believed to be accelerated to relativistic speeds in supernova
remnants1â"3. All components of the cosmic rays show an
intensity that decreases as a power law with increasing energy
(for example as E22.7). Electrons in particular lose energy rapidly
through synchrotron and inverse Compton processes, resulting in a
relatively short lifetime (about 105 years) and a rapidly falling
intensity, which raises the possibility of seeing the contribution
from individual nearby sources (less than one kiloparsec away)4.
Here we report an excess of galactic cosmic-ray electrons at energies
of
electrons. Such a source could be an unseen astrophysical object
(such as a pulsar5 or micro-quasar6) that accelerates electrons to
those energies, or the electrons could arise from the annihilation of
dark matter particles (such as a Kaluzaâ"Klein particle7 with a mass
of about 620 GeV).