Published in Physics World, 1 Dec 2011
An excess of radio waves recorded by a balloon-borne experiment could be a signal of dark matter, a new study suggests. Data from the ARCADE mission seem to fit in with other direct, recently reported evidence for dark matter, although some believe they may have a mundane explanation.
Dark matter is an elusive substance thought to make up more than 80% of the matter in the universe. While dark matter is invoked to explain the anomalous rotational velocity of galaxies and other mysterious astronomical phenomena, no-one has yet detected it conclusively. In recent years, however, hints of detections have been reported by several experimental collaborations, namely CRESST and DAMA at the underground lab in Gran Sasso, Italy, and CoGeNT at the Soudan mine in Minnesota, US. Other secondary evidence for dark matter has been reported by the satellite-borne experiment PAMELA and possibly the balloon-borne experiment ATIC – both of which have looked for excesses of electrons and positrons generated by dark-matter collisions. […]
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