New research suggests that dark matter may once again hold the key to one of astronomy’s enduring mysteries: the excess of gamma rays shining from the Milky Way’s center. By modeling the galaxy’s early history and violent mergers, the team found that dark matter in the core may be shaped far differently than previously assumed, potentially matching the puzzling radiation pattern first detected by NASA’s Fermi telescope. The findings revive dark matter as a serious contender for explaining the Milky Way’s enigmatic central glow.

Peking University, October 22, 2025: A research team led by Prof. Tian Hui  and his Ph.D. student Zhang Jiale  from the School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, has made significant progress in studying stellar magnetic activity. Using observations taken from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), known as the “China Sky Eye”, the team uncovered a new type of millisecond-scale radio bursts from an M-type star AD Leo. By combining these observations with surface magnetic field measurements, they confirmed that the radio signals originate from small-scale magnetic structures in the starspot regions. This work fills a long-standing gap in our understanding of small-scale magnetic fields on stars beyond the solar system and provides new insights into the mechanisms behind their coronal eruptions and space weather phenomena. The result was recently published in Science Advances.