Dark matter: announcement of its detection by a NASA satellite after 60 years of tracking!

What would the immense Vera Rubin, who died in 2016 and considered the inventor of the contemporary notion of dark matter, think if she learned of the announcement of its possible detection? 62 years since these abnormal particles eluded all scientists. Dr Tomonori Totani, a renowned cosmologist and professor at the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo, believes he has proof of the presence of matter at the center of the galaxy.

These are data from NASA’s FERMI telescope that were studied by Totani. This is gamma radiation – the same radiation responsible for the colossal force of the Hulk – absolutely invisible to our eyes but whose very high frequency is the most energetic in the Universe.

15 years of FERMI telescope data studied

It’s in a fairly dense paperof which he is the sole signatory, that Dr. Totani presents his conclusions after studying 15 years of data from NASA’s gamma-ray telescope.

Dark matter is so called because it contributes to gravitating mass but without any electromagnetic interaction (or an excessively weak interaction, depending on the models). For those familiar with the different theoretical models, this would be WIMPS, in other words massive and very energetic particles.

Dr Totani finds an emission peak at 20 GeV which he judges “with high statistical significance”, that is to say that according to him this excess energy cannot be explained by the known phenomena of star explosions and others.

“If correct, to the best of my knowledge, this would mark the first time humanity ‘saw’ dark matter. And it turns out that dark matter is a new particle not included in the current Standard Model of particle physics. This signifies a major development in astronomy and physics”, enthuses Tomoroni Totani.

Particles 500 times more energetic than a photon

This excess energy would therefore, for the astrophysicist, be proof of the annihilation of non-baryonic, non-“ordinary” particles, with a mass deduced to be approximately 500 times greater than that of a photon. The dark matter present at the heart of the galaxy would thus be in the form of a halo, as predicted by the models.

The dynamics of galaxies finally understood thanks to this possible discovery?

The implications of such an announcement, if confirmed, would be unprecedented. All the internal dynamics of the Universe would be understood, that is to say the dynamics specific to matter: stars in galaxies, galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Today, one element we are missing is this dark matter.

Instead of only understanding and explaining well 5% of the Universe, as is the case today, we would arrive at around 30%. All that would remain is to understand the why of the dynamics of space itself. Work devoted in particular to satellite Euclid of the ESA.

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