A team of NASA researchers have discovered unexplained excesses of gamma radiation in the Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31. These could be traces of dark matter, according to the agency's website.
“We believe that dark matter accumulates in the inner regions of the Milky Way and other galaxies, which is why we were very interested in finding such a clear trail,” said astrophysicist Pierrick Martin. M31 will be the key to unraveling what is happening inside Andromeda and the Milky Way."
The discovery was made with the Fermi gamma telescope, which in 2009 captured the first traces of dark matter in the form of excess gamma radiation in the center of the Milky Way. Due to the fact that the brightness of this radiation exceeded theoretically predicted values, scientists suggested that its source was the decay of colliding wimps (hypothetical weakly interacting massive particles).
Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that does not emit or directly interact with electromagnetic radiation. This property of this form of matter makes it impossible to directly observe it. Elucidation of the nature of dark matter will help solve the problem of hidden mass, which, in particular, lies in the abnormally high speed of rotation of the outer regions of galaxies.