Rumor has it that scientists have discovered dark matter through an orbiting observatory called PAMELA. Aside from a few physicists given a sneak peek at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden, the results largely remain shrouded in mystery.
PAMELA researchers dropped some clues with an initial announcement, stating that their experiment has seen a surplus of positrons, the antimatter counterpart to the electron.
This abundance falls in line with current dark matter theory; the number of positions found “exactly matches” what dark matter particles would produce if they were annihilating each other at the center of the galaxy. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception their results receive when published.
For the record, PAMELA stands for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-Nuclei Astrophysics (what a mouthful eh?). It’s the first satellite sensitive enough to comb through antimatter, or antiparticles in space, with the goal of detecting dark matter.