A search for the collision of matter and antimatter in our galaxy has turned up a signal that might be the best direct evidence of dark matter to date.
These are the first findings to come from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment, which was installed on the International Space Station in 2011 during the second-to-last shuttle mission ever. AMS has since recorded more than 25 billion particle events streaming in from all over the universe, including 400,000 positrons, the antimatter doppelganger of the electron. This is the largest collection of antimatter ever seen in space.
The data show “unexpected new phenomena,” though whether these have their origin in dark matter or some more mundane explanation is not yet known, said Nobel-prize-winning physicist Samuel Tingof MIT during a talk at CERN today. These findings will be published Friday in Physical Review Letters.
The physics community has been eagerly awaiting the results, especially after Ting teased that he had “big news” coming from his team during a conference in February.
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