{"id":214218,"date":"2025-10-20T23:24:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T23:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/214218\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T23:24:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T23:24:15","slug":"mysterious-glow-at-center-of-milky-way-may-be-from-dark-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/214218\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious glow at center of Milky Way may be from dark matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n At the center of our galaxy, there\u2019s a mysterious, diffuse glow<\/a> given off by gamma rays \u2014 powerful radiation usually emitted by high-energy objects such as rapidly rotating or exploding stars.\n <\/p>\n

\n NASA\u2019s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the glow shortly after launching in 2008, and the light has puzzled scientists ever since, prompting speculation on its cause.\n <\/p>\n

\n Some astronomers believe the source of the glow to be pulsars \u2014 the spinning leftovers of exploded stars \u2014 while others point to colliding particles of dark matter, an elusive and invisible form of matter that is believed to be five times<\/a> more abundant than regular matter.\n <\/p>\n

\n Many studies<\/a> have previously found support for both ideas<\/a>, but there seemed to be a problem with the dark matter theory: The gamma ray glow appeared to match the shape of the galactic bulge \u2014 a crowded, bulbous region at the center of the Milky Way that\u2019s mostly made up of old stars, including pulsars. This observation seemed to support the pulsar theory, with experts theorizing that the glow would have taken a more spherical form if its source were dark matter. However, astronomers haven\u2019t been able to observe enough of the pulsars that would be producing the gamma rays to make a conclusive assessment.\n <\/p>\n

\n Now, new simulations made using supercomputers show for the first time that dark matter collisions could also have created the bulge-shaped glow, adding weight to the dark matter theory.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019re in the situation where we have two theories, one posturing dark matter and claiming that it could explain the data we see, another one old stars,\u201d said Joseph Silk, a professor of physics and astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and coauthor of a study<\/a> detailing the new findings, published Thursday in the journal Physical Review Letters.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s a 50% chance that it might be dark matter at this point, as opposed to the slightly more mundane explanation of old stars, in my opinion.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Evidence of dark matter would make for a groundbreaking discovery. Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky first theorized dark matter\u2019s existence in the 1930s, and American astronomers Vera Rubin and W. Kent Ford confirmed it in the 1970s. They noticed that stars orbiting at the edge of spiral galaxies were moving too quickly to be held together by visible matter and gravity alone, and postulated that there was a large, unseen quantity of matter preventing them from flying apart. Despite decades of effort, scientists have never observed the mysterious substance directly, hence its name.\n <\/p>\n

\"Vera<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s no question that the nature of dark matter is one of the outstanding major problems in physics,\u201d Silk said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that\u2019s everywhere \u2014 near us, far from us, and we just don\u2019t know what it is.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n There are many hypotheses on what dark matter could be, including remnants of primordial black holes<\/a> or an undiscovered type of particle. Much of the effort to find dark matter has centered on the latter idea, leading to the construction of detectors such as the LZ Dark Matter Experiment in South Dakota.\n <\/p>\n

\n The instrument is designed to spot one of the leading dark matter candidates<\/a>, hypothetical particles called WIMPs \u2014 Weakly Interacting Massive Particles \u2014 which don\u2019t absorb light and can pass through regular matter almost seamlessly. Scientists believe that when two WIMPs meet, they annihilate each other and produce gamma rays, which would make them a plausible source of the glow.\n <\/p>\n

\n Silk\u2019s study used supercomputers to create a map of where dark matter should be in the Milky Way, taking into account how the galaxy originally formed.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe problem was that all of the models over the past 20 years of the dark matter in our galaxy assume it\u2019s basically like a spherical ball. There is no shape to it, because that was the simplest model,\u201d Silk said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOur contribution was, for the first time, to make a real computer simulation of the dark matter distribution. And lo and behold, we found the central part of the dark matter, where the gamma rays would be being emitted, to be, in fact, squashed \u2014 more like egg-shaped.\u201d This squashed shape is a close match to the Fermi telescope data, Silk explained.\n <\/p>\n

\"NASA\u2019s<\/p>\n

\n Luckily, confirmation of the link between dark matter and the glow may not be too far in the offing. A new instrument, the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory,<\/a> or CTAO, is under construction at two sites \u2014 one in Chile and another in Spain \u2014 and will start to return data as soon as 2027<\/a>. CTAO will detect gamma rays at a much higher resolution than Fermi, Silk said, making it possible to tell if the gamma rays at the center of the Milky Way are the product of dark matter collisions.\n <\/p>\n

\n That finding would be a breakthrough in the search for the elusive substance, he added, as well as offer proof that at least some dark matter is made of WIMPs. If, on the contrary, CTAO doesn\u2019t link the glow to dark matter, scientists would be back to square one in the search, with all options still on the table.\n <\/p>\n

\n The study helps reopen the possibility that dark matter could explain the glow at our galactic center, although it doesn\u2019t give new positive evidence in favor of dark matter, said Tracy Slatyer, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved with the study. However, she is not convinced that there is a definitive match between the shape of the dark matter distribution and the stellar bulge. \u201cI thought the dark matter hypothesis was still reasonable even before this study,\u201d she added.\n <\/p>\n

\n This work is further support for the international effort to keep pushing in the hunt for WIMPs, according to Chamkaur Ghag, a professor of physics and astronomy at University College London, who also didn\u2019t participate in Silk\u2019s research. \u201cThey remain a most elegant solution to the long-standing dark matter problem,\u201d Ghag added via email, noting that with even more detectors for WIMPs under development, seeing signals of these particles annihilating in space would mean settling the near-century old puzzle of dark matter.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Nico Cappelluti, an associate professor in the department of physics at the University of Miami, said that the Fermi telescope has been a game changer for NASA, and this paper shows that dark matter is still very much in the race to explain the strange glow at the center of our galaxy. \u201cThat mystery is alive, and it\u2019s the kind that keeps scientists like me awake at night,\u201d said Cappelluti, who didn\u2019t take part in the study.\n <\/p>\n

\n Figuring out what dark matter is has been the scientific quest of our century, he added, noting that \u201cWIMPs, these hypothetical particles, have been our prime suspects for years.\u201d The fact that experiments on Earth haven\u2019t caught them yet is frustrating, he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cBut Fermi gives us a reason to keep believing. This paper reminds us not to cross WIMPs off the list just yet \u2014 they might still be lighting up the center of our galaxy,\u201d Cappelluti said. \u201cAnd if that\u2019s true, we\u2019re closer than ever to uncovering a fundamental secret of the universe.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Sign up for CNN\u2019s Wonder Theory science newsletter<\/a>. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the center of our galaxy, there\u2019s a mysterious, diffuse glow given off by gamma rays \u2014 powerful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-214218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}