---
title: "Shocking Research Threatens Our Understanding of Dark Matter"
description: "A controversial new research paper threatens to upend what many astrophysicists assume to be true about dark matter — but many remain unconvinced the new study is correct. The paper focuses on a bold claim: a team of University of California, Berkeley astrophysicists failed to find any dark matter, the invisible stuff that […]"
date: "2020-04-13"
modified: "2020-04-13"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/research-doesnt-find-dark-matter-milky-way"
categories:
  - "Astrophysics"
  - "Dark Matter"
  - "Physics"
  - "Science & Energy"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "astrophysics"
  - "dark matter"
  - "the digest"
---

# Shocking Research Threatens Our Understanding of Dark Matter

![A research team failed to find a widely-accepted dark matter particle candidate in the Milky Way galaxy, causing a stir among disagreeing astrophysicists.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/research-doesnt-find-dark-matter-milky-way.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: ESA/Hubble\</em\>*

## Choosing Sides

A controversial new research paper threatens to upend what many astrophysicists assume to be true about dark matter — but many remain unconvinced the new study is correct.

A team of University of California, Berkeley astrophysicists failed to find any dark matter, the invisible stuff that [holds galaxies together](<https://futurism.com/dark-matter-conflicting-results>), within the Milky Way, *[Live Science ](<https://www.livescience.com/sterile-neutrino-dark-matter-signal-missing-milky-way.html>)*[reports](<https://www.livescience.com/sterile-neutrino-dark-matter-signal-missing-milky-way.html>). But because that's almost certainly an incorrect takeaway, the paper seems instead to suggest that other astrophysicists were wrong about how to find dark matter in the first place.

## Diving In

One popular hypothesis is that dark matter is made of a theoretical subatomic particle called the sterile neutrino. When sterile neutrinos decay, they're thought to give off x-rays at a specific wavelength. So scanning galaxies for those x-rays has been an indirect way to measure how much dark matter they contain, according to *Live Science*.

Here's where [the research](<https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6485/1465>), published in the journal *Science* in March, creates a problem: astrophysicists turned their attention inward and looked for that x-ray frequency within our own galaxy. And they found nothing, potentially debunking the sterile neutrino model.

## Fast And Loose

But other astrophysicists say they just missed it, *Live Science* reports, because they used a different methodology that potentially narrowed down the search too much.

That's the crux of the argument: the new paper suggests others picked up on background noise instead of the x-ray signal, and those others say the new paper happened to miss the real signal itself.

**READ MORE:** [A huge cloud of invisible particles seems to be missing from the Milky Way](<https://www.livescience.com/sterile-neutrino-dark-matter-signal-missing-milky-way.html>) \[*Live Science*\]

**More on dark matter:** *[Two Nearly-Identical Dark Matter Studies Have Conflicting Results](<https://futurism.com/dark-matter-conflicting-results>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)