POLITICS Canada’s first science minister brings air of change p.445STRING THEORY Philosophers join debate over scientific method p.4462015 IN REVIEW Gene editing, climate change, Pluto and more p.448BY EL I Z A B E T H GI B N E Y, C EL EST E BI EV E R & DAV ID E CAST E LVEC C H IA gainst a purple morning sky, in a cloud of brown smoke, the Monkey King took off. China’s first space-based dark-matter detector — nicknamed Wukong (or Monkey King) after a warrior in a sixteenth-century Chinese novel — rocketed into the air on 17 December, marking the start of a new direction in the country’s space strategy. From Earth’s orbit, the craft aims to detect high-energy particles and γ-rays. Physicists think that dark matter — a substance thought to make up 85% of the Universe’s matter but so far observed only through its gravitational effects — could reveal itself by producing such cosmic rays as its constituent particles annihilate.Wukong, officially called the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), is also notable for being the first in a series of five space-science missions to emerge from the Chinese Acad-emy of Sciences’ Strategic Priority Program on Space Science, which kicked off in 2011.China is already one of the world’s major space powers, but so far has focused on human and robotic exploration, with little investment in space science. (A notable exception is the Double Star probe launched in collaboration with the European Space Agency in 2003 to study magnetic storms on Earth.)The DAMPE lift-off from the Jiuquan Satel-lite Launch Center in northern China will be followed next year by a further two missions: the world’s first quantum-communications satellite and an X-ray telescope observing in PROFILES Ten people who mattered in science this yearp.459The Monkey King spacecraft, which took to the skies on 17 December, is designed to detect the high-energy particles produced by annihilating dark matter.J I N L I W A N G /X I N H U A /E Y E V I N ECOSMOSLOGY Dark-matter probe launches era of Chinese space science Monkey King is first in a line of Chinese space missions focused on scientific discovery.24/31 D E C E M B E R 2015 | V O L 528 | N A T U R E | 443NEWS IN FOCUS © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
本文来源：https://www.2haoxitong.net/k/doc/930020d07e192279168884868762caaedd33ba74.html
