When you look at the stars, you probably know what you’re seeing, or at least you think so. If your sky-gazing needs a bit of extra mystery, nature seems to have provided it:
Oct 18, 2011: NASA’s Fermi team recently released the second catalog of gamma-ray sources detected by their satellite’s Large Area Telescope (LAT). Of the 1873 sources found, nearly 600 are complete mysteries. No one knows what they are.
“Fermi sees gamma rays coming from directions in the sky where there are no obvious objects likely to produce gamma rays,” says David Thompson, Fermi Deputy Project Scientist from Goddard Space Flight Center.
Gamma rays are by their very nature heralds of great energy and violence. They are a super-energetic form of light produced by sources such as black holes and massive exploding stars. Gamma-rays are so energetic that ordinary lenses and mirrors do not work. As a result, gamma-ray telescopes can’t always get a sharp enough focus to determine exactly where the sources are.
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“Some of the mystery sources could be clouds of dark matter – something that’s never been seen before,” speculates Thompson.
Which, granted, makes sense, since it’s dark. Although I tried to squint really hard one time, and for a second there I swear I saw some dark matter.
