Scientists closing in on dark matter?

A colloquium brought together more than 100 cosmologists, particle physicists and observational astrophysicists in the hunt to determine what is dark matter.

Their goal was to take stock of the latest theories and findings about dark matter, assess just how close we are to detecting it and spark cross-disciplinary discussions and collaborations aimed at resolving the dark matter puzzle.

"Ten years ago, I don't think you would've found astronomers, cosmologists, and particle physicists all agreeing that dark matter was really important," said Michael S Turner, Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.

"And now, they do. And all of them believe we can solve the problem soon," he said in a statement.

"The excitement now is that we are closing in on an answer, and only once in the history of humans will someone discover it," said Edward Kolb, from University of Chicago.

"There will be some student or postdoc or experimentalist someplace who is going to look in the next 10 years at their data, and of the seven or so billion people in the world that person will discover what galaxies are mostly made of. It's only going to happen once," he said in a statement.

"I think it's fair to say the discovery is 'around the corner.' If we continue with exclusions, then we have to come up with

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