Emily Chan
For years, astronomers and physicists have been on a mission to solve one of the universe’s greatest mysteries: the nature of dark matter.
The elusive substance makes up over 85 percent of the matter in our universe, but it does not produce any light or energy, rendering it to be practically invisible. Since scientists can’t see dark matter, it is extremely difficult to detect.
However, a recent study has unexpectedly linked dark matter to antimatter, indicating that dark matter could be the source of rare antihelium nuclei detected in cosmic rays.
These particles are the antimatter counterparts of helium nuclei. Unusually high numbers of them have been observed by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) on the International Space Station (ISS).
“WIMPs are particles that have been theorized but never observed, and they could be the ideal candidate for dark matter,” said Pedro De La Torre Luque from the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Madrid, Spain.
“These particles would interact with ordinary matter and other particles only through gravity and the weak interaction force, one of the four fundamental forces that operate only at very close distances.”
De La Torre Luque and colleagues utilized advanced computer simulations to model how dark matter particles, particularly Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), might generate rare antimatter particles like antihelium through annihilation events.
Their results suggest that typical astrophysical processes are unable to fully explain the presence of antihelium, but certain types of dark matter may produce detectable quantities of it.
Furthermore, dark matter annihilation could account for the observed antihelium-3 nuclei but not the even rarer antihelium-4 nuclei. Therefore, it is possible that more exotic and complex processes or particles are involved.
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