国内英语资讯:Chinese satellite detects mysterious signals in search for dark matter_时事

国内英语资讯:Chinese satellite detects mysterious signals in search for dark matter

"However, the data of the strange signal are still not enough. We need to collect more data to make sure it's real," Chang said.

More than 100 Chinese scientists and engineers, together with those from Switzerland and Italy, took part in the development of DAMPE and the analysis of its data.

Researchers have ruled out the possibility that the unusual signals are caused by a malfunction of the satellite's detectors. Independent analyses from five different teams all came to the same conclusion, said Chang.

DAMPE's design life is three years, but as it is performing so well, scientists expect it to work much longer. "DAMPE will continue to collect data to help us better understand the anomaly and might bring dark matter out of the shadows," said Chang.

Nobel Laureate Samuel Chao Chung Ting, leader of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) experiment on the International Space Station, said of DAMPE, "It's a very good experiment."

Bi Xiaojun, a particle physicist at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the CAS, said DAMPE's observations are important to help scientists better understand the origin of cosmic rays.

"The satellite's data on the spike at 1.4 TeV are still not enough to declare a physical discovery. If the signal can be confirmed with the accumulation of data, it would be of great significance," Bi said.

"That could be explained by either dark matter or an astrophysical source. If we use dark matter to explain it, dark matter would be different from what we thought before. It conforms to the popular dark matter model of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP), but has some special features," Bi said.