Dark Matter Could Shed Light on Glow of Gamma Radiation
The origins of a faint glow of gamma-ray radiation are unknown, but dark matter may be the cause — or maybe its just the eruption of supermassive black holes at the cores of energetic galaxies.
A faint glow of gamma radiation — the unresolved gamma-ray background — fills the sky. This energy is not evenly distributed, as this light (much more energetic than can be seen by the human eye) is concentrated where the greatest amount of matter is found in the early Universe, while regions containing less matter exhibit lower emissions of radiation.
This correlation between matter and the unresolved gamma-ray background, could help astrophysicists better understand the nature of dark matter, a new study suggests.
The energy which makes up this background radiation comes from sources so far away from us that they cannot be resolved by astronomers. However, the fact that this radiation is concentrated in the same regions which were densely packed with matter in the early universe could provide a tantalizing clue to its nature.
“The background is the sum of a lot of things ‘out there’ that produce gamma rays. Having been able to measure for the first time its correlation with gravitational lensing — tiny distortions of images of far galaxies produced by the distribution of matter —…
