Study claims to provide first direct evidence of dark matter

"Dark matter was first described in the 1930s, when the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky noticed that distant galaxies appeared to be spinning faster than their mass allowed. The observations led to the notion of dark matter, a material that neither emits nor absorbs light, but exerts an unseen gravitational pull on the galaxies it surrounds. Scientists have searched for dark matter particles ever since, but so far ground-based detectors, space-based telescopes"

"One of the many theories of dark matter postulates that it is made from so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or wimps, which are heavier than the protons found inside atoms, but barely interact with normal matter. When two wimps collide, they can annihilate one another, releasing other particles and a burst of gamma rays. To search for potential dark matter signals, Totani analysed data from Nasa's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which detects the most energetic photons in the electromagnetic spectrum."

Nearly a century ago dark matter was proposed after galaxy rotation anomalies indicated extra unseen mass. Dark matter constitutes about 27% of the cosmos but its composition and reality remain open questions. One theory posits weakly interacting massive particles (wimps) that can annihilate to produce gamma rays. A researcher analysing NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope data identified a gamma-ray pattern resembling the Milky Way's dark matter halo. Ground-based detectors, space telescopes and the Large Hadron Collider have so far failed to detect dark matter particles directly. More work is required to exclude less exotic explanations before the gamma-ray signal can be confirmed as dark matter.

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