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Weird X-Rays Spur Speculation about Dark Matter Detection

From Scientific American:

Many major discoveries in astronomy began with an unexplained signal: pulsars, quasars and the cosmic microwave background are just three out of many examples. When astronomers recently discovered x-rays with no obvious origin, it sparked an exciting hypothesis. Maybe this is a sign of dark matter, the invisible substance making up about 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. If so, it hints that the identity of the particles is different than the prevailing models predict.

The anomalous x-rays, spotted by the European Space Agency’s orbiting XMM–Newton telescope, originate from two different sources: the Andromeda Galaxy and the Perseus cluster of galaxies. The challenge is to determine what created those x-rays, as described in a study published last month in Physical Review Letters. (See also an earlier study published in The Astrophysical Journal.) The signal is real but weak and astronomers must now determine whether it is extraordinary or has a mundane explanation. If that can be done, they can set about the work of identifying what kind of dark matter might be responsible. [Read more at Scientific American ]