Boston - looking for dark matter big news may be in two weeks or so, the space for basic particle physics experiment leader said: today (February 17,) at the annual meeting of the American association for the advancement of science.
At this time of the alpha magnetic spectrometer, particle collector installed in the international space station, the results will be submitted to a scientific journal the first paper, MIT physicists DingZhaoZhong said, AMS chief researcher.
Although life coy, but, what is it, it was found, he said, the results for the mysterious dark matter, intangible things, than conventional matter in the universe, a factor about six to one.
"This is not a small paper," Mr. Ding said, suggesting that result is very important, scientists overwritten files before they are satisfied with 30 times. But, he says, it means "one small step", make clear what is dark matter is, maybe not the final answer. [photo: AMS in space the singular particle hunting]
Physics theory is that dark matter is by WIMP (weak interaction massive particles), one kind is their antimatter partner particles, particles. When matter and antimatter meet partners, they kill each other, so if two of the collision of WIMPs, they will be destroyed, the release of her daughter's particle - electronic and its antimatter, positron, in the process.
Alpha magnetic spectrometer may have found in the Milky Way in the dark matter annihilation generated positron and electronic. $200 million machine was installed in the international space station in May 2011 to today, have already detected 2.5 billion particle events, including about 800 million dollars of electronic and positron. This is the first report of scientific papers, how many were found, their energy, Mr. Ding said.
If the experiment detected peak in a certain energy, this may indicate a detection dark matter, a large number of positron, and electronic rich the universe, in our side, there is less known methods, may cause positron.
"Smoking gun signature is a rise, then fell sharply" relative to the number of positron energy, because the dark matter annihilation generated positron will have a very specific energy, according to the quality of WIMPs dark matter, and will not participate in AMS project at the university of Chicago cosmologist Michael Turner said. "This is the key signature."
Another vividly there will be problems if positron in the space from one direction to, or from all over the world. If they are from dark matter, the scientists expect them to evenly spread through space, but if they created some normal celestial physical process, such as exploding, and they originated in one direction.
"There are a lot of things, can imitate the dark matter, said:" Harvard University theoretical physicists lisa Randall, who also participated in the project, but said she eagerly waiting for AMS results. "In these experiments of the problem is, when you have antimatter astrophysics source, can be accounted for, what time do you have this may be a sign, you have anything new?"
Regardless of whether AMS has found that dark matter, the scientists say they expect the origin of the dark matter problem become more clear. In addition to AMS experiments, such as the large hadron collider in Switzerland, and the underground buried in all over the world, also can find the dark matter detector, in the near future.



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