Wukong releases scientific achievements and new discoveries in dark matter research
The second batch of scientific achievements of Wukong, China's first dark matter particle detection satellite, was officially released on the 28th. According to the Zijinshan Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wukong has obtained an accurate cosmic ray proton energy spectrum in the tev-100tev (1tev = 1 trillion electron volts) energy region and found a new spectral structure.
In December 2015, 'Wukong' successfully flew into the sky with 'golden eyes' and embarked on the' road of learning 'to find dark matter. In 2017, Wukong announced its first discoveries: the satellite obtained the most accurate energy spectrum of high-energy electronic cosmic rays in the world at that time, and directly measured an abnormal fluctuation of electronic cosmic rays in space, which may be related to dark matter.
After nearly four years in orbit, Wukong once again announced its new harvest in space.
According to fan Yizhong, deputy chief designer of the scientific application system of the Wukong dark matter particle detection satellite and researcher of the Zijinshan Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based on the data of the first two and a half years, Wukong officially announced the accurate energy spectrum measurement results of cosmic ray protons from 40gev (1GeV = 1 billion electron volts) to 100tev, This is the first time in the world to use space experiments to accurately measure the proton spectrum of cosmic rays up to 100tev. Compared with the experiment of the electronic telescope with the energy meter of the international space station, the measured energy band is increased by 10 times.
According to its introduction, one of the core scientific objectives of Wukong dark matter particle detection satellite is to accurately measure the energy spectrum of cosmic ray protons and nuclides and find new energy spectrum structures. The measurement results of the Wukong confirmed the hardening behavior of the proton energy spectrum found in previous experiments at hundreds of GeV. More importantly, Wukong first found that the proton energy spectrum softened significantly at about 14 TEV.
Yuan Qiang, a member of the "Wukong" scientific cooperation group and a researcher at the Zijinshan Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that this new structure is likely to be a "mark" left by individual cosmic ray sources in close neighbors, which is of great significance to reveal the origin and acceleration mechanism of high-energy cosmic rays.
Researchers said that so far, Wukong has made breakthroughs in the measurement of electronic and proton cosmic rays, and all detectors are intact. " Wukong has entered the operation stage of "prolonging life", and more research results will be published one after another.