We Can’t See It, But It Makes Up Most of Our World

They’ve finally found the God particle, and now for the next big scientific search: dark matter (which accounts for most of the mass in the universe).

Dark Matter can’t be seen with telescopes, but astronomers know it’s there because of the gravitational effects it has on the matter we CAN see. Galaxies, for example, could not rotate the way they do and hold their shape without the presence of dark matter.

Normal matter, the kind we can see with telescopes (such as stars and galaxies) is less than 5% of the mass/energy density in the universe, while dark matter makes up almost 30%.

Space may look empty, but it’s actually filled with particles that are known as cosmic rays. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), is searching the sky for these cosmic rays (NOTE:Subscribers can still listen to this show). Like CERN, AMS consists of a large magnet and an array of sensors that can track a charged particle’s path.

AMS now has evidence for what could be dark matter colliding with itself in a process known as "annihilation." A new theory suggests that showers of these particles should be produced when dark matter particles collide somewhere in space and destroy each other.

On BBC News, Jonathan Amos quotes physicist Roberto Battiston as saying, "AMS is displaying is far greater than past experiments, so we’re getting closer to unveiling the cause of the particle events we’re detecting."

In scientific terms, we’ve found God–Now we may be close to discovering most of Creation.

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