Astronomers at the ETH Zürich and the University of Zürich along with a team of international researchers have discovered large quantities of dark invisible matter in close proximity to the sun. It has been believed till now that a massive “halo” of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way Galaxy, but these observations contradict this theory.
This is a novel study which uses a technique that has been evaluated against mock data from simulations of superior quality. Tantalising hints are also found of a new dark matter component in our galaxy by the authors.
The researchers used sophisticated simulation of the Milky Way galaxy to evaluate their technique of mass measurement before its application to real data. The results were surprising; they observed that methods used over the past two decades were biased, which underestimated the quantity of dark matter. A novel unbiased method was formulated by researchers that recovered the right answer from the data simulated. A new measure of the local dark matter density was obtained when they applied their method to the large number of orange K dwarf stars close to the sun.
Silvia Garbari, the lead author, expressed 99% confidence in the fact that there is dark matter close to the sun.
A number of physicists feel that dark matter is a new basic particle that shows minimal interactions with normal matter but can be detected in deep underground experiments. A precise measure of the local dark matter intensity is essential for these kinds of experiments.
Professor Lake explained that experimental physicists hope to measure only a few of these particles every year in CDS and XENON experiments. In order to reveal just what kind of particle it comprises, understanding the local properties of dark matter is essential.
Source: http://www.mediadesk.uzh.ch