Gamma Rays from Galactic Center Dark Matter
Explanation:
What is creating the gamma rays at the center of our Galaxy?
Excitement is building that one answer is elusive
dark matter.
Over the past few years the orbiting
Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope
has been imaging our Galaxy's center in
gamma-rays.
Repeated
detailed analyses
indicate that the region surrounding the
Galactic center seems too bright to be accounted by
known gamma-ray sources.
A raw image of the
Galactic Center region in gamma-rays is shown above on
the left,
while the image on the right has all known sources subtracted -- leaving an unexpected
excess.
An exciting
hypothetical model that seems to fit the excess involves a type of
dark matter known as
WIMPs, which may be colliding with themselves to create the detected gamma-rays.
This hypothesis is controversial, however, and debate and
more detailed investigations are ongoing.
Finding the nature of dark matter is one of the great quests of
modern science, as previously this unusual type of
cosmologically pervasive matter has shown itself only through
gravitation.
Astrophysicists:
Browse 750+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
