A strange gamma-ray glow emanating from the heart of the Milky Way could be the long-sought fingerprint of dark matter particles annihilating each other, evidence suggests.

A new research effort involving simulations of Milky-Way-like galaxies shows that the mysterious, unexplained extra gamma radiation emanating from the region is equally likely to be due to dark matter annihilation as to millisecond pulsars – and the dark matter hypothesis might even have a slight edge.

"Dark matter dominates the Universe and holds galaxies together. It's extremely consequential and we're desperately thinking all the time of ideas as to how we could detect it," says astrophysicist Joseph Silk of Johns Hopkins University.

"Gamma rays, and specifically the excess light we're observing at the cente

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