ISS detector detects possible dark matter signal An analysis of 41 billion cosmic rays hit by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) particle detector aboard the International Space Station has revealed an unknown phenomenon that could be a possible dark matter particle known as a neutralino, Pphys.orgreports. A key to the hunt for the mysterious dark matter at AMS is the ratio of positrons to electrons. Positrons are antimatter relative to electrons. Scientists have noted a rise in the ratio of positrons to electrons followed by a sharp drop, which may indicate that dark matter is annihilating in the Milky Way's halo, which lies beyond its central disk of stars and dust, according to Michael Turner, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics in University of Chicago. If current theoretical models are correct, a massive pool of dark matter—perhaps 1 million light-years across—envelops a visible galaxy that is about 100,000 light-years in diameter. Visible matter, stars and galaxies make up less than 5 percent of the total mass in the Universe. The rest comes from dark matter and the anti-gravity force, which is understood as dark energy. AMS is looking for evidence of dark matter neutralinos, which - if they exist - should collide with each other and emit charged particles that AMS can detect. “We have not found definitive proof of dark matter,” said AMS researcher Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Nobel Prize winner. “Although all the AMS results point in the right direction, we still need to measure how quickly the positron fraction drops off at the highest energy levels to rule out astrophysical sources such as pulsars.” A second set of evidence should emerge from further measurements of the antiproton-to-proton ratio, which could also rule out pulsars as energy sources. AMS was installed on the space station in May 2011. Since then, the $2 billion instrument has amassed a mountain of data from 54 billion cosmic ray events, 41 billion of which have been analyzed. Of these, 10 million particles were identified as electrons and positrons. Over the life of the space station, AMS must measure hundreds of billions of cosmic rays. AMS is not the only tool to hunt for dark matter. The Large Hadron Collider, for example, plans to produce dark matter parent and progenitor particles. If you've read the article this far please like and subscribe - it really helps the channel. Open the link to find thousands of interesting articles: https://wwwwww.youtube.com/...ityt3yt3.ggpht.com/...-v1