From the article: "The new AMS results may ultimately help scientists narrow in on the origin and features of dark matter"<p>So yet another link-bait headline.
This is a surprisingly Vague article for MIT press. I understand its just the press release and not the white paper but could there not be a little more detail? Perhaps Interns are writing it could it not have a bit more content be it data, opinion from scientist, the leading theory in the area.<p>Its exciting stuff and not a dead end article, so little progress has been made in this field and the unknowns are so fast that eve a glimpse is interesting.
Hmm... whenever I see this [articles about dark matter or dark energy] nowadays I think back to something Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson said on the subject along the lines of "We're calling it Dark Matter or Dark Energy because can we measure it (or rather the fact that we're missing a huge chunk of it), but that doesn't mean it's 'dark' or even 'matter' or even one single thing."<p>It's cool to hear about breakthroughs on the subject but as someone else said, at this point this article feels more like link-bait than anything concrete.<p>Maybe it's just some folks who are incredibly stoked wanting to share before they have their ducks-in-row. So I'm not trying to say it's intentional.<p>I'm just hungry for new information, and excited about it, so when it's not all there I'm disappointed. Nerd problems, haha.
Very strange to see this article posted now. This news from the AMS is over a year old. And clearly, there is considerable debate whether the positron excess is from dark matter particle annihilation or from nearby pulsars. There are many papers on the subject - here is just one example that explains some of the issues - <a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.1840.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.1840.pdf</a> (PS - I am an astronomy graduate student).
Compatible with a dark matter particle on the order of 1 TeV - now just turn LHC back on, find a matching supersymmetric particle and give a welcome party for the 5th dimension.