Electron 'bump' may confirm dark matter

摘要

A high-altitude balloon experiment above the Antarctic seems to have seen a possible signature of mysterious 'dark matter', similar to that spotted earlier this year by a European satellite. The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC), an experiment to search for charged particles from space, has spotted a surplus of high-energy electrons coming from somewhere in the cosmos (see Letter, page 362, and News & Views, page 329). Although the interpretation is far from certain, the electrons could be produced by dark matter - previously undetected particles that physicists believe make up 85% of all matter in the Universe.