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China's Dark Matter Probe Detects Tantalizing Signal (sciencemag.org)
hackingbear shares a report from Science Magazine: Results reported by a China-led space science mission provide a tantalizing hint -- but not firm evidence -- for dark matter. In its first 530 days of scientific observations, China's Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) detected 1.5 million cosmic ray electrons and positrons above a certain energy threshold. When researchers plot of the number of particles against their energy, they saw hints of an anomalous break in the curve. Now, DAMPE has confirmed that deviation. "It may be evidence of dark matter," but the break in the curve "may be from some other cosmic ray source," says astrophysicist Chang Jin, who leads the collaboration at the Chinese Academy of Science's Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing. DAMPE's life span will be extended to 5 years given the excellent conditions of this Chinese spacecraft, then it can record over 10 billion cosmic events, allowing researchers to confirm if it is indeed dark matter. Perhaps more significantly, the first observational data produced by China's first mission dedicated to astrophysics shows that the country is set to become a force in space science, says David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. China is now "making significant contributions to astrophysics and space science," he says. The DAMPE results appear online in the journal Nature.
More details here:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/First_finding_of_Chinas_DAMPE_may_shed_light_on_dark_matter_research_999.html
"DAMPE has directly detected a spectral break at ~0.9 TeV, with the spectral index changing from ~3.1 to ~3.9."
This is pretty energetic stuff for Electrons and Positrons. I don't think that they have released anything significant about the Photons or heavier Nuclei yet.
Can I make a little joke about China's Purple Mountain's Majesties now?
Oh, I thought not... you folks are enough to DAMPEn anything.
No, the 1.5M was strikes ABOVE THE THRESHOLD, it doesn't say the total collected then.
Here's the open access article on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.109... I don't think they determined the statistical significance