Although the composition of dark energy remains a mystery, scientists have already started taking short but decisive steps to understand dark matter . In April, Dr. Samuel Ting, the 1976 Nobel laureate in Physics, announced that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle detector that has operated on the International Space Station for two years, has counted more than 400,000 positrons, the antimatter of the electrons. "This implies the existence of a new phenomenon: it may be a dark matter signal," says Ting.
An accepted theory affirms that dark matter is made of a particle called "neutralino". Collisions between neutralinos should produce a large number of high-energy positrons, which the AMS should be able to detect with unprecedented sensitivity. "The accuracy of our instruments is excellent," says the expert, who is convinced that we have enough data to support the dark matter hypothesis. However, we must take into account the possibility that these positrons could come from other sources, specifically from pulsars stars. The AMS instrument will be able to distinguish between pulsars and dark material. "We need more data at higher energies to decide what the correct explanation is, but it is a matter of time," concludes Ting.
Angela Posada-Swafford
