Finding traces of the elusive dark matter is no easy task, as any astrophysicist scouting all parts of the sky can tell you. In theory, it may be possible to detect it using several means, but, thus far, all efforts have been in vain. It would appear, some say, that the best bet for finding dark matter during this generation's efforts is to look for its remnants. And that's exactly what the PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light nuclei Astrophysics) satellite has done.

The craft, launched in 2006, has discovered an extremely large concentration of positrons, sub-atomic and exotic particles, which are often thought to be the antimatter counterpart of electrons. This means that when an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate each other.

It is believed that they may have come from a large amount of dark matter that was destructed following a cosmic event of some kind. The hypothesis goes that when two dark matter particles collide with each other, they have the potential to destroy one another, which releases large bursts of energy, as well as amounts of positrons.

“PAMELA found a number of positrons much higher than expected. Many think this could be a signal from dark matter, because for positrons this behavior fits very well with many theories of dark matter,” Piergiorgio Picozza, the principal investigator of the Italian satellite, told Space.

“This kind of signal for dark matter has been predicted as a possible leading signature for over two decades, and [the PAMELA scientists] are seeing just the kind of things one might expect. There's a very good chance that this is the most important discovery in basic physics for decades,” Gordon Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan, added.

Positrons can also be created by the collision between powerful cosmic rays and the dust and gas that can be found between stars and planets, in galaxies. But experts say that there is no way the vast concentration of particles that has been discovered by PAMELA could have been generated by such a source, as it would have taken enormous amounts of gas / dust and cosmic rays to create it. “We hope to have detected dark matter, but now we need other verification coming from other experiments,” Picozza concluded.