First Hint of Dark Matter Detected

A cosmic ray detector on the International Space Station has found the first real hint of dark matter--that elusive substance scientists think outnumbers normal matter by a ratio of 5 to 1.

And that's why this is such an important story, we can detect all the normal matter that makes up everything in our known universe including you and me - but we've come to realize that there's this invisible stuff - or at least invisible to the detection technology we have so far - and this stuff fills space and exerts gravitational pull on galaxies. So it's been a big challenge just to figure out that dark matter exists at all, let alone figuring out how to detect it and actually finding some by building this billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

But, for the first time, we have some kind of confirmation of actual dark matter. Now, the scientists aren't anywhere near ready to conclusively say they've definitely found dark matter, but the initial data seems to be confirming that it's there and they're confident that over the next two decades aboard the space station, the experiment's smooth operation so far indicates it should produce enough data to settle the dark matter mystery once and for all.