14 DAY TRIAL // Astrophysicists from the University of California in Irvine (UCI), led by experts Kevork Abazajian and Manoj Kaplinghat, say that the gamma-rays photons emanating from the core of the Milky Way show characteristics consistent with light that would result from collisions between dark matter particles.
Thought to be made up of weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMP), the elusive stuff is known to interact with baryonic matter exclusively through gravitational interactions. But models suggest that WIMP may interact with each other, producing energetic gamma-rays as a byproduct.
The UCI team believes that this is what gamma-rays telescopes are observing. New counts of energetic photons from the area around Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the core of our galaxy, suggests that more gamma-rays are produced than can be accounted through baryonic interactions.
“This is the first time this new source has been observed with such high statistical significance, and the most striking part is how the shape, spectrum and rate of the observed gamma rays are very consistent with the leading theories for dark matter,” Abazajian says, quoted by Science Blog.