Dark matter. We. inverted commas, discovered
it, some 80 years ago. It makes up some 27%
of the universe, whilst normal matter, everything
we percieve, is just a little under 5%. So
it should be everywhere. But we've never actually
managed to detect it. Physics suggests it
exists. It HAS mass, but it doesn't interact
with the universe as we see it.
Until now, because, within days of one another
and independently, two universities say they
have discovered a phenomenon that may be a
smoking gun for dark matter. Just days after
an announcement by a team at Harvard, astrophysicist
Alexey Boyarsky and a group from Leiden University
in the Netherlands have also announced the
discovery of tiny spikes in the X-rays emitted
by a number of galaxies. The spikes are tiny,
but there's no reason for them to be there,
they don't fit into the standard model as
it... stands.
But they are there, and that means they may
just be particles of dark matter. The particles
have been named 'sterile' neutrinos, because
although they have mass, they don't interact
with the world around them.
Measurements will now need to be taken of
the galaxies which focus in on the wavelength
observed by the research groups, but once
that's done, the book might be closed on one
of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos.
