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Space

Space may be filled with more antimatter than we can explain

A detector on the International Space Station found signatures of unexpectedly abundant antimatter – which may have been created in clashes of dark matter particles

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

4 October 2024

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) is visible at center left

The International Space Station with the particle-detecting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer visible at centre left

NASA

The neighbourhood of space where the International Space Station (ISS) resides seems to be littered with unexpected quantities of antimatter – and the culprit may be mysterious dark matter particles.

“We were very surprised. This is weird, and the mechanism that is producing this amount of antimatter should be something exotic,” says Pedro De La Torre Luque at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain. He and his colleagues found hints of this antimatter by analysing 15 years of data from the Alpha Magnetic…

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