OK, I might be feeling a little cranky about this, but my article for Ars Technica is a little more measured. I’ll have a longer analysis for Galileo’s Pendulum tomorrow, for those who want it. The short version: the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a particle detector installed on the International Space Station. For several months, the lead investigator has been hinting that AMS-02 detected the signature of dark matter annihilation: collisions between dark matter particles producing an excess of positrons. However, the actual research paper was rather short on dark matter, however interesting the AMS-02 results really were.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a particle detector based on the International Space Station, designed for looking at a variety of particles from many sources, among them dark matter collisions. Recently, the AMS-02 research team announced the results of its first 18 months of data collection. These results are frustratingly ambiguous: while AMS-02 found an excess of certain type of particle expected from some models of dark matter annihilation, this excess didn’t bear the hallmarks predicted for a dark matter signature. So, something interesting is going on in the AMS-02 data, but the chances of dark matter being the cause seem a bit low. [Read more…]

Update: I published my rant over at Galileo’s Pendulum, explaining exactly why I’m grumpish about the way these results were announced and characterized in much of the media.