Dark matter is a bit of a wimp

Scientists are hopeful that the construction of a new telescope using the most energetic form of light will give them some answers to the puzzle of dark matter.

The identity of dark matter - the mysterious stuff that makes up a quarter of the universe - continues to elude scientists, even decades after they first inferred its existence.

The leading candidate that might explain the fundamental make-up of dark matter is a hypothetical particle called the weakly interacting massive particle - WIMP. With the Gamma-Ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) – based at Stanford University - scientists hope to find clear evidence that dark matter is indeed made of WIMPs.

“With GLAST, we hope to actually see individual dark matter annihilations,” said Michael Peskin, professor of theoretical physics at Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre. “GLAST has the real possibility of making a fundamental contribution to understanding what galaxies are made of.”

Even though it is much more weakly interacting than ordinary matter, dark matter is not spread out evenly through space and scientists think it forms clumps in galaxies. If dark matter is composed of WIMPS, this clumping would improve the chances of these particles meeting and annihilating, producing steady streams of gamma rays detectable by GLAST.

Along with numerous other dark-matter experiments, such as searches for WIMP collisions in underground detectors and attempts to manufacture WIMPs at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, many scientists believe the existence of WIMPS could be confirmed within the next few years.

Ted Baltz, a Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) researcher who also works on the GLAST project said: “If GLAST doesn't see anything, and the LHC doesn't see anything, a lot of people will be surprised. But, we've been wrong before.”