The candidates for dark matter come in two basic sorts: largish chunks, or darting, sub-atomic particles in unimaginable abundance.
Primack proposed an idea for dark matter in 1982 that is still a leading contender: The notion that supersymmetry is responsible for dark matter.
One of the leading candidates for dark matter is the neutralino.
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Until now, the hunt for dark matter has proved elusive.
BBC: Dark Matter: Experiment to shed light on dark particles
Searches for dark matter are also being carried out at CERN using the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, and other laboratories.
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"If you take all the experiments that have reported results to date, we will surpass them within four days of operating, " says Mr. Gaitskell, who has been searching for dark matter for 24 years.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was designed to search for dark matter by collecting high energy radiation known as cosmic rays, and then sort through it looking for a certain class of particle believed to be created after two bits of dark matter collide in space and destroy each other.
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Like other groups searching for possible dark-matter particles (such as axions and neutrinos), the best they can hope for at the moment is to narrow the field.
Since both are affected by gravity they are attracted to each other, so the distribution of normal, visible matter acts as a proxy for the distribution of dark matter.
Among other things, this telescope is also looking for evidence of dark matter and dark energy.
Beyond Higgs the ATLAS experiment will now be looking for evidence of dark matter in the universe and extra dimensions of space.
That's because as the Earth moves around the Sun, it is moving into a stationary field of dark matter - and for half the year it will be moving against the tide of dark matter - just like driving into the rain.
BBC: Dark Matter: Experiment to shed light on dark particles
Meanwhile, in space, scientists are looking for the signatures of dark matter and dark energy.
Meanwhiel, in space, scientists are looking for the signatures of dark matter and dark energy.
They point to a body of other evidence for the existence of dark matter.
Now, in a controversial paper that has recently appeared on arXiv, an online collection of physics papers, Fred Cooperstock and Steven Tieu of the University of Victoria in Canada claim that one of the key pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter is not really there.
Julie McEnery, project scientist for the Fermi mission, said a deepening dark matter mystery has sparked the call for proposals to change the telescope's mission.
So if we see the positrons coming from a particular direction, it means astrophysics like a pulsar (a type of neutron star) is responsible for the signal, not dark matter.
Those of you hoping for direct and obvious evidence of dark matter may be a little disappointed, but let's be honest -- you were being overly optimistic.
So do candidates for the particles that make up dark matter, a shadowy substance whose presence can be deduced from its gravitational pull (see article) but which does not interact much via the three Standard-Model forces.
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This has posed a challenge for scientists trying to figure out where dark matter is.
"To account for these results you have to have a lot of matter in the Universe and that leaves little room for dark energy, " said Alain Blanchard of the Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees in France.
Given their abundance, neutrinos with even a minuscule mass would account for much or all of the so-called dark matter of the universe stuff that astronomers know is there because of its gravitational influence, but cannot actually see.
Scientists are looking for tiny amounts of light, which would be emitted when dark-matter particles interact with xenon atoms.
Indeed, one principal purpose of the Bolshoi simulation is to compute and model the evolution of dark matter halos thereby rendering the invisible visible for astronomers to study, and to predict structures that astronomers could then seek to observe.
But for the other half it will be moving with this tide and less dark matter will hit.
BBC: Dark Matter: Experiment to shed light on dark particles
One possible explanation for these positrons is the mutual annihilation of the matter and antimatter forms of a type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles, also known as WIMPs.
ECONOMIST: The search for dark matter: Ethereal yet weighty | The
"There's a huge synergy there, in astronomers trying to find the influence of dark matter by mapping stars and galaxies and large structures in the universe, and particle physicists trying to discover the source of that influence of dark matter through subatomic particles here on Earth, " said Jason Kalirai, deputy project scientist for the telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
For the past few years Dr Kuhlen and his colleagues have been working on a computer model of the halo of dark matter in which the Milky Way (the Earth's home galaxy) is thought to be embedded.
ECONOMIST: The search for dark matter: Ethereal yet weighty | The
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