A Whiff of Dark Matter on the ISS

[DreamGypsy]

2. Your skepticism is unwarranted in this case...

the AMS is a eighteen year NASA project with participation of 16 countries and a whole bunch of research institutes. The spectrometer has been functioning on the ISS for just under 2 years and recently had measure positron densities over a sufficient range of energies to justify a report on the findings. The AMS-02 cosmic ray detection count is approaching 32 billion events. A small fraction of those are positrons.

Here's the link to the report published April 5th in the Physical Review Letters. A good discussion of the results is available on Quantum Diaries.

You certainly are justified in complaining about the style and content of popular science writers, even those employed by NASA. "Whiff" of dark matter? Opening with science fiction about anti-matter explosions?? Come on. Science doesn't need to be cute for people to read it.

The AMS is cool and is estimated to be be functioning for 10 more years.