Editor's Summary
6 November 2008
Where to find dark matter
The nature of the 'dark matter' thought to form the bulk of the Universe remains obscure. One suggestion is that it is an elementary particle, perhaps the lightest supersymmetric partner of known particle species. If that were true, annihilation of dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way should produce 
-rays at a level that should soon be detectable. Where should we be looking for these -rays? Springel et al. report numerical simulations that suggest that the dominant and most easily detectable signal will be produced by diffuse dark matter in the main halo of the Milky Way. Previously it was thought that the annihilation signal might be dominated by emission from small clumps of dark matter near to our part of the galaxy, but this new work suggests that their contribution would be small.
News and Views: Astrophysics: An illuminating dark halo
A large simulation reveals that most of the detectable signal from dark matter in our Milky Way probably comes from the main, smooth Galactic halo, rather than from small clumps.
Stéphane Colombi
doi:10.1038/456044a
Letter: Prospects for detecting supersymmetric dark matter in the Galactic halo
V. Springel, S. D. M. White, C. S. Frenk, J. F. Navarro, A. Jenkins, M. Vogelsberger, J. Wang, A. Ludlow & A. Helmi
doi:10.1038/nature07411
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