A Chinese dark matter orbiter has discovered something interesting that may be link up to sorry matter particles . As of yet , we ’ve never directly detected such atom .
The artificial satellite is called the Dark Matter Particle Explorer ( DAMPE ) . It ’s dub Wukong , which translates as “ Monkey King ” , and was launched in December 2015 .
The satellite is designed to look for the disintegration signal of a divinatory dark matter candidate called a weakly interacting massive particle ( WIMP ) . It take care for the decay of WIMPs , which are expect to annihilate each other occasionally and bring about brace of electron and antielectron .
The first results from the missionary work were published today inNature . In its first 530 days of scientific observations , it detected 1.5 million cosmic ray electrons and positrons above 25 gigaelectronvolts ( GeV ) . And it has find 3.5 billion cosmic ray with energies above 100 trillion electronvolts ( TeV ) .
In its total life , about five years , the satellite is await to record 10 billion cosmic rays events .
What ’s particularly interesting about these latest determination , though , is that the satellite follow a “ spectral break ” in the act of electrons and positron from cosmic rays at the 900 billion electronvolt chump . And no one is entirely certain why that break is there .
One possibility is that non-white topic speck are creditworthy for the break . But cosmic rays from pulsars or supernovae could also be the drive , so scientist are n’t jump to any conclusions just yet .
“ It may be grounds of dark thing , ” astrophysicist Chang Jin , project leader from the Chinese Academy of Science ’s ( CAS ’s ) Purple Mountain Observatory ( PMO ) in Nanjing , toldScience Magazine . But he added it “ may be from some other cosmic ray of light source . ”
DAMPE is a collaboration between more than a hundred scientists from China , Switzerland , and Italy . The orbiter orbits at a peak of about 500 kilometers ( 310 miles ) above Earth .
" Together with data from the cosmic microwave background experiments , in high spirits energy da Gamma - irradiation measurements , and other astronomical telescopes , the DAMPE data point may serve to at long last elucidate the link between the positron anomaly and the annihilation or decay of particle dark matter , " Fan Yizhong , the deputy chief designer of DAMPE ’s scientific applications programme system , suppose in astatement .
The apparitional break mentioned above has been spotted before , by a telescope array in Namibia calledHESSand theCALorimetric Electron Telescopeon the International Space Station . These latest findings , however , could facilitate us narrow down down on the button what ’s going on . It brings us a step nearer , though , to making the first - ever unmediated detection of dark affair .
