Cosmic Antimatter Excess Confirmed

by Geoffrey Koch on 22 November 2011, 4:13 PM | 0 Comments

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Detector. The Fermi telescope, visible here as the large silver "box" atop the satellite, has confirmed an anomalous antimatter signal in the cosmic ray spectrum.

Credit: Naval Research Laboratory/NASA

 

In 2008, the Italian satellite PAMELA picked up an unusual signal: a spike in antimatter particles whizzing through space. The discovery, controversial at the time, hinted that physicists might be coming close to detecting dark matter, an enigmatic substance thought to account for 85% of the matter in the universe. Now, new data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope confirm the spike. Alas, they also undermine its interpretation as a sign of dark energy.

MORE: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/11/cosmic-antimatter-excess-confirm.html?ref=hp

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