NASA's groundbreaking cosmology
satellite, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, has
in the
decade since its launch delivered a robust indirect detection
of dark
matter's footprint on the ancient echo
of light known as the cosmic microwave background.
For their study, Hansen and his colleagues combined ancient paleo - climate data with new
satellite readings and an improved model
of the climate system to demonstrate that ice sheets can melt at a «non-linear» rate: rather than an incremental melting as Earth's poles inexorably warm, ice sheets might melt at exponential rates, shedding dangerous amounts
of mass
in a
matter of decades, not millennia.