{"id":199944,"date":"2024-11-22T01:31:22","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T07:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/a-nearby-supernova-could-end-the-search-for-dark-matter"},"modified":"2024-11-22T01:31:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T07:31:22","slug":"a-nearby-supernova-could-end-the-search-for-dark-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/a-nearby-supernova-could-end-the-search-for-dark-matter","title":{"rendered":"A nearby supernova could end the search for dark matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-nearby-supernova-could-end-the-search-for-dark-matter3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The search for the universe\u2019s dark matter could end tomorrow\u2014given a nearby supernova and a little luck. The nature of dark matter has eluded astronomers for 90 years, since the realization that 85% of the matter in the universe is not visible through our telescopes. The most likely dark matter candidate today is the axion, a lightweight particle that researchers around the world are desperately trying to find.<\/p>\n<p>Astrophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley, now argue that the axion could be discovered within seconds of the detection of gamma rays from a nearby supernova explosion. Axions, if they exist, would be produced in copious quantities during the first 10 seconds after the core collapse of a massive star into a neutron star, and those axions would escape and be transformed into <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/high-energy+gamma+rays\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">high-energy gamma rays<\/a> in the star\u2019s intense magnetic field.<\/p>\n<p>Such a detection is possible today only if the lone gamma-ray telescope in orbit, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, is pointing in the direction of the supernova at the time it explodes. Given the telescope\u2019s field of view, that is about one chance in 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The search for the universe\u2019s dark matter could end tomorrow\u2014given a nearby supernova and a little luck. The nature of dark matter has eluded astronomers for 90 years, since the realization that 85% of the matter in the universe is not visible through our telescopes. The most likely dark matter candidate today is the axion, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}