A controversial claim by the DAMA group that it has detected dark matter in an underground lab in Italy might turn out to be true after all, according to physicists in Europe and the US. The new research reconciles the claimed detection with apparently null results from other experiments, as well as indirect astrophysical evidence. It proposes that dark matter interacts with ordinary matter not via one of the four known fundamental forces but instead through a fifth force mediated by an axion-like particle.

Dark matter is an as-yet-unknown substance that does not emit electromagnetic radiation but which numerous observations suggest makes up at least 80% of the matter in the universe. DAMA, a collaboration of physicists from Italy and China, says it has directly observed dark matter in a sodium-iodide detector located beneath Gran Sasso mountain east of Rome. The basis for its claim is a seasonal variation in…