New particle could explain why the universe's greatest mystery remains unsolved

A completely new type of fundamental particle may explain the mystery of 'dark matter', the missing material that makes up more than 80 per cent of the universe's mass, according to British scientists. Researchers at the University of Southampton believe the nature of their hypothetical particle may be the reason why no-one has yet managed to detect dark matter directly. A nanoparticle will be suspended in space to see if dark matter alters its position 'At the moment, experiments on dark matter do not point into a clear direction and, given that also the Large Hadron Collider at Cern has not found any signs of new physics yet, it may be time that we shift our paradigm towards alternative candidates for dark matter,' said co-author Dr Alexander Merle, from the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany. Scientists believe dark matter makes up 26.8 per cent of the combined mass-energy of the universe.