Many are the scientists who over the years have been working almost exclusively on something as difficult as proving that dark matter really exists. After the community has finally accepted that at a theoretical level it may be true that it exists, it remains to truly demonstrate all this in a real way. This is the main mission of DAMPE (Dark Matter Particle Explorer), a Chinese probe that will be launched into space to try to discover one of the greatest mysteries of our time.
However… Why is DAMPE so special? According to the scientists who have worked for many years in the development of this probe and especially in the creation of a methodology with which to prove that dark matter exists, we are talking about a platform capable of directly measuring and with unprecedented resolution the mysterious origin of positrons and electrons from certain cosmic rays.
DAMPE is the name by which the satellite in charge of demonstrating that dark matter exists
Thanks precisely to this capacity and above all due to the enormous state-of-the-art technological arsenal with which this satellite has been equipped, many are the scientists who want to go further in the way of using DAMPE today. The idea is to use the best of your ability to get all those mechanisms linked to high energies, something that could help us, after so much waiting time and invested research, to observe dark matter once and for all.
As a detail, as has been revealed by the members of this project and contrary to the practice that is being carried out in many other investigations, it has been concluded that dark matter cannot be observed directly since it literally does not interact in any way with anything other than gravity. With this premise as a basis, the researchers wanted to design a completely different work methodology from the ones developed. Thanks to this way of working and understanding dark matter, a current that has more and more followers, the probe, understood as a mere tool, should be able to measure the particles generated in the annihilation of dark matter.
The idea that the researchers working on this project have is that, if finally dark matter is as we think theoretically, it must undergo a destruction process with dark antimatter, which will eventually produce pairs of positrons and electrons in a spectrum of high energy, same that only the 2 to 5 teraelectronvolts range, an amount that, despite being very high, can be measured by DAMPE instruments.
DAMPE is a tool created by the Chinese Academy of Sciences that has been in orbit since 2015
As a final detail, tell you that DAMPE was launched into space in 2015 and is the tool designed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in collaboration with various universities such as Swiss, Chinese and Italian. During its construction, the satellite was equipped with technology such as detectors specialized in gamma rays, electrons and cosmic rays, a double layer analyzer of detectors of 'scintillation'to avoid positive faults and even a tungsten tracking converter.
In its latest measurements, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has managed to demonstrate what this technological marvel is capable of, which, after all this time, is finally ready to help us in the measurement of very high-energy particles, something that will be of a enormous help to find what many scientists do not hesitate to call the most elusive item we've ever looked for. As a final point, let me tell you that there are still a few months left for DAMPE to start making all these measurements, process the data and send them to Earth for scientists to study.