Source: Space.com
“Scientists may have ‘seen’ dark matter for the first time, thanks to NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray space telescope. If so, this would mark the first direct detection of the universe’s most mysterious substance. Dark matter was theorized in 1933 by astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who found that the visible galaxies of the Coma Cluster lacked the necessary gravitational influence to prevent this cluster from flying apart. … If dark matter particles ‘annihilate’ when they meet each other and interact, much as matter and its counterpart antimatter do, then it should produce a shower of particles, including photons of gamma-rays that, while invisible to our eyes, could be ‘seen’ by sensitive gamma-ray space telescopes. … A team of researchers, led by Tomonori Totani from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo, trained the Fermi spacecraft on the regions of the Milky Way where dark matter should congregate, namely at the center of our galaxy, and hunted for this telltale gamma-ray signature.” (11/25/25)