Researchers can also detect dark matter indirectly through specific signatures in cosmic rays and gamma rays. Researchers use large, sensitive detectors located deep underground to directly search for the dark matter particles that may continually pass through the Earth. The DOE Office of Science High Energy Physics program supports research on dark matter through complementary experiments, some in partnership with the National Science Foundation and other agencies. DOE Office of Science: Contributions to Dark Matter Alternately, dark matter may also exist in a rich and complex set of particles. In theory, axions would convert to a particle of detectable light (called a photon) in the presence of a strong magnetic field. Another candidate is the axion, a particle ten-trillionth of the mass of an electron. One possibility is that dark matter is made of WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) that would have 1 to 1,000 times more mass than a proton. Scientists have several candidates for the types of particles that make up dark matter. But the nature of dark matter remains a mystery. In the 1970s, Vera Rubin of the Carnegie Institution found evidence for dark matter in her research on galaxy rotation. The galaxies in the Coma Cluster were moving too quickly for as much mass as there appeared to be, and dark matter was a potential explanation. The term dark matter was coined in 1933 by Fritz Zwicky of the California Institute of Technology to describe the unseen matter that must dominate one feature of the universe-the Coma Galaxy Cluster. For example, scientists can explain how galaxies rotate and how the large-scale structure of the universe forms and evolves by dark matter’s existence.

Despite our lack of knowledge, scientists do have overwhelming indirect evidence for dark matter. However, we know little about it other than that it only interacts with ordinary matter through gravity. Dark matter accounts for five times as much of the universe as ordinary matter.

What is dark matter made of