Scientists Claim to Detect Dark Matter for the First Time Ever

"A team of astronomers say they may have detected dark matter, the invisible substance thought to make up over 85 percent of all matter in the universe, for the first time in history. The claim is controversial, and the findings, published in a new study in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, will need to be borne out by further observations."

""This could be a crucial breakthrough in unraveling the nature of dark matter," study author Tomonori Totani, an astronomer at the University of Tokyo, told The Guardian. The ordinary "baryonic" matter that we see and touch, and makes up everything from planets to stars, doesn't exist in great enough quantities to account for the formation of galaxies, because they simply don't have enough mass to exert the gravitational pull to hold themselves together. Dark matter, outnumbering ordinary matter five-to-one, was to hypothesized to explain this discrepancy."

"The more exotic theories range from so-called primordial black holes, which can be smaller than an atom and virtually impossible to see, to the echoes of parallel universes. One of the prevailing ideas, though, is that dark matter is made up of particles called WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. In addition to not interacting with light and ordinary matter, WIMPs are slower and heavier than baryonic particles, allowing them to clump together and form massive haloes."

Astronomers may have detected dark matter for the first time, though the claim remains controversial and requires further observational confirmation. Ordinary baryonic matter that composes planets and stars is insufficient to explain galaxy formation because it lacks the mass to provide necessary gravitational binding. Dark matter, estimated to outnumber baryonic matter roughly five-to-one, supplies the extra gravity that shapes galactic structure. Proposed explanations include primordial black holes and echoes of parallel universes. A leading particle hypothesis identifies dark matter as WIMPs—weakly interacting massive particles—that neither emit nor absorb light and can clump into haloes where galaxies form.

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