The search for dark matter, that mysterious and invisible substance that makes up most of the material universe and that neither absorbs nor emits light , could have taken a new step. Two observatories, NASA's Chandra X-ray and the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton have detected what appears to be a dark matter signal. The discovery has been published in The Astrophysical Journal .
Although it is still not very clear, at the moment, if the peak of X-ray emission from more than 70 different galaxy clusters is actually a sign of the decay of a certain type of dark matter particles , the study leader Esra Bulbul states that "we know that the explanation for dark matter is a long shot, but the payoff would be huge if we are right."
Due to the particular characteristics of this substance, which represents more than 80% of all the matter in the universe, it cannot be observed directly, hence we still do not know what exactly this type of matter is.
"Our next step is to combine the data from Chandra and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Suzaku mission to see if we find the same X-ray signal in a large number of galaxy clusters," say the scientists involved in this study. investigation.
Image Credit: John Helly, Till Sawala, James Trayford, Durham University
