By DENNIS OVERBYE - NY TIMES
Added: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 UTC

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/science/space/31dark.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

In the latest episode of their continuing efforts to embrace and understand the dark side of creation, astronomers sifting data from a new satellite say they have discerned the existence of a mysterious haze of high-energy particles surrounding the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Nobody knows where the particles came from, and the five astronomers who posted their results online on Monday did not offer a formal opinion. But one tantalizing prospect, they admit, is that the particles are the decayed remains of the long-sought dark matter that constitutes 25 percent of the universe.

“Obviously we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it could be dark matter,” said one of the authors, Douglas Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

If true, it would mean that astronomy has finally entered the realm of seeing the unseeable.

The identity of this dark matter, presumably exotic elementary particles left over from the Big Bang, is one of the biggest mysteries in physics. Other experts, however, say it is far too soon to draw such far-reaching conclusions based on signals from the confused and energetic environs of the galactic center.
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TAGGED: SPACE