Mysterious glow in Milky Way's centre could be due to dark matter

The mysterious glow in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy could be due to dark matter, as per a recent study.

Astronomers have been perplexed by the Galactic Center GeV Excess (GCE) ever since it was discovered in 2009.

Due to the very high densities of dark matter predicted to be present in the central region of our galaxy, the inner Milky Way is expected to be the single brightest source of dark matter annihilation radiation in the sky.

This region is astrophysically rich and complex, however, making the task of separating dark matter annihilation products from backgrounds potentially challenging.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope observes and identifies gamma rays from dark matter annihilations occurring cosmologically, as well as within the Galactic Halo, dwarf galaxies, microhalos, and the inner region of the Milky Way.

With Fermi, astronomers at long last have a superior tool to study how black holes, notorious for pulling matter in, can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds.

Physicists are able to study subatomic particles at energies far greater than those seen in ground-based particle accelerators. And cosmologists are gaining valuable information about the birth and early evolution of the Universe.

In this study, the region surrounding the Galactic Center, a dark matter particle is annihilating with a cross-section within a factor of a few of the value predicted for a thermal relic.

However, researchers exclude the possibility that these photons originate from an astrophysical source or sources with similar morphology and spectral shape to those predicted in an annihilating dark matter scenario.