Scientists May Have Caught The First Real Glimpse Of Dark Matter, Universe's Most Elusive Ingredient

Scientists may have observed dark matter directly for the first time, using data from NASA's Fermi gamma-ray space telescope - a finding that, if verified, would mark a major shift in modern physics, according to a report in The Guardian.

Dark matter has been one of astronomy's biggest mysteries for nearly a century. The idea first emerged in the 1930s, when Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky realised that galaxies in the distant Coma Cluster were moving far too fast to be held together by the gravity of their visible stars. Decades later, Vera Rubin's studies of spiral galaxies showed that the outer regions rotated just as quickly as their centres - something that only made sense if an unseen mass was providing extra gravitational glue.

Read What A Recent Study Said About Existence Of Dark Matter

To this day, dark matter has never been observed directly. It doesn't emit, absorb or reflect light. In that sense, it behaves a bit like the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings - powerful, omnipresent, but essentially invisible. Yet scientists believe it makes up about 85 per cent of all matter in the universe, outweighing everything we can see - stars, planets, even our own bodies - according to space.com.

But a new study led by Prof Tomonori Totani of the University of Tokyo hints that we may finally have caught dark matter in the act.

Totani's team analysed Fermi telescope observations of the Milky Way's centre - the region where dark matter is expected to be densest. They detected a halo-shaped glow of gamma rays at energies of around 20 gigaelectronvolts, an unusually strong signal that neatly matches predictions for a type of hypothetical dark matter particle known as a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle). In theory, when two WIMPs collide, they annihilate each other, releasing gamma rays - the universe's most energetic form of light.

"The emission closely matches the shape expected from a dark matter halo," Totani is quoted as saying by space.com. He added that no known astronomical phenomena provide an easy alternative explanation.

If the results hold up under scrutiny, this would be the first time humanity has "seen" dark matter - not directly with our eyes, but through the energetic fingerprints it leaves behind. It would also point to a brand-new particle outside the Standard Model of physics, placing scientists on the brink of a discovery as transformative as the Higgs boson.

But like every good plot twist - think Interstellar or Arrival - the scientific community is cautious. More data, and more verification, are needed. For now, dark matter remains partly hidden, but perhaps no longer completely in the dark.