Thread: Cosmic Rays From A Mysterious, Nearby Object
View Single Post
  #80 (permalink)  
Old 03-March-2009, 08:48 PM
timb's Avatar
timb timb is offline
Established Member
  
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 1,163
Default
Quote:
Originally Posted by timb View Post
OTOH Cosmic-ray electron signatures of dark matter says the spectral shape of the electron excess is insufficient to discriminate a dark-matter origin from more conventional astrophysical explanations. The Case for a 700+ GeV WIMP: Cosmic Ray Spectra from ATIC and PAMELA says look for the gamma ray smoking gun.

None of the papers appears to have evidence to distinguish dark matter annihilation from alternatives, but counting papers shows that dark matter is by far the favorite explanation at the moment.


Odds for dark matter being the explanation lengthening considerably. Dark Matter Signals In Cosmic Rays?

Quote:
The flux of the diffuse gamma-ray background radiation (GBR) does not confirm that the excess in the flux of cosmic ray electrons between 300-800 GeV, which was measured locally with the ATIC instrument in balloon flights over Antartica, is universal as expected from dark matter annihilation. Neither does the increase with energy of the fraction of positrons in the cosmic ray flux of electrons in the 10-100 GeV range that was measured by PAMELA imply a dark matter origin: It is consistent with that expected from the sum of the two major sources of Galactic cosmic rays, non relativistic spherical ejecta and highly relativistic jets from supernova explosions.
Reply With Quote