smoking gun

Dark stars have a smoking gun signature, an absorption feature at 1640 Angstrom, due to the large amounts of singly ionized helium in their atmospheres.

That tape became the so-called “smoking gun” evidence of a Watergate cover-up.

“There is no one smoking gun, and I know that’s problematic for people to understand,” Barger said at a news conference Thursday.

It may not be a proverbial smoking gun – an undeniable link to wrongdoing that destroys careers or supercharges criminal investigations.

In other words, no smoking gun - just an uneasy wait for answers that may never even fully emerge.