"Prospective dark matter annihilation signals from the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal" - Venville et al. (2024)
Alan Duffy
My extraordinary student Thomas Venville undertook an exhaustive study into the use of a nearby galaxy (that is currently being consumed by our Milky Way galaxy) as a potential source of gamma-radiation that could be from the self-annihilation of that dark matter that surrounds this galaxy. The challenge as Thomas conclusively demonstrated is that these signals appear both weaker than previously estimated, and together with the fact that the galaxy has recently been shown to emit gamma-rays of astrophysical origin, complicate the use of it in indirect DM detection searches.
This disappointing conclusion is the nature of science, you don’t know the outcomes when you start and you can’t change the result when it is reached - nature need not be kind to you in that search after all - but one thing we know from the scientific method is that each step in that journey regardless of it being positive or negative brings us closer to that discovery.