Talk:Weakly interacting massive particle

hypen in the name

This page was moved to "Weakly-interacting massive particles" two months ago under the reason that there was a hyphen missing in the compound modifier "weakly interacting". However, no hyphen is needed in compound modifiers after adverbs that end in -ly. Someone with high enough privileges, please move the page back to "Weakly interacting massive particles".

name

This presents an interesting puzzling for naming conventions: if something like "WIMP" is almost always referred to as such, should it be listed under its acronym or under its full title? I have no very strong views about this case particular case, but I lean toward moving it to the full title. This particular page would be a perfect instance for that, because the acronym has two different uses; therefore, WIMP could redirect to those other two pages. --LMS

Weakly interacting massive particle is long enough that it won't be fun to link to. What do you think of perhaps putting the article at WIMP (astronomy)?

I'd say yes, I suppose. I don't know, an astronomer familiar with naming conventions should decide, I guess. --LMS

Another option would be Dark matter/WIMP, but I really intended the article to talk about WIMP (astronomy) here and link to graphical user interface as a footnote. --Damian Yerrick

Neutralinos

Are neutralinos massive enough to be WIMPs? I'm trying to decide whether to add a hook on WIMP or on dark matter.

Neutralinos (not to be confused with neutrinos) are in fact a favored WIMP candidate. --Reuben 01:08, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

structure and cleanup

Hi! I think this article needs more structure and some clean up regarding terms that are normally not used or used differently in a Physics context. For instance no real world object can be cooled down to 0 Kelvin. I will start working on this in a few days. Otherwise my vote is for using WIMP (astronomy)! Awolf002 22:38, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I re-arranged the article. Start blaming me... ;-) Awolf002 12:23, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

weakly interacting

The article says it's called "weakly interacting" because its interactions with other particles are weak, in the sense of not strong. I thought it meant it interacted only through gravity and the weak nuclear force. 207.69.0.97 19:58, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

No, I do not think so. Interaction via the weak force would actually be a pretty "strong" one. These particles would therefore be easily detectable. The name "weak force" was chosen in regard to the other, strong nuclear force, not because it is really weak. Awolf002 20:31, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Then by what force (besides gravity) DO they interact? 207.69.3.246 20:17, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

The W in WIMP hedges its bets by meaning both things at once. Typically a WIMP should have interactions at about the strength of the weak nuclear force, but those interactions don't have to be dominated by the weak nuclear force. For example, supersymmetric WIMPs might well scatter off of nuclei mainly through the Higgs. As long as the cross-sections are somewhere on the order of the weak nuclear force, you can still call it a WIMP. --Reuben 01:14, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I certainly DO think...

...that this page goes on WIMP (astronomy), because of the possibility of the existence of a radio station or television station with call letters WIMP. Does one exist?? Please check to see whether one exists, and whether it is WIMP-FM, WIMP-AM, or WIMP-TV, then move this page to WIMP (astronomy), and then make WIMP a dis-ambiguation page. 66.32.129.87 20:01, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Created a page on DAMA/NaI experiment and linked to that page

Unfortunately someone has voted to remove the DAMA/NaI page. He thinks it's original research. I doubt if he knows what original research is. It is true that the article is technical. However, it is easier to write the article this way and to improve it later. I give some references that can be used to expand the article and make it less technical.

In explaining WIMPs...

I think it'd make the article clearer if the necessity of WIMPs' existence (or the evidence thereof) was explained. Right now there's allusion to certain theoretical problems but not what those problems are.

Best, --Kharhaz 21:07, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Confusing line

"Because WIMPs may only interact via the gravitational and weak forces, they are virtually undetectable. Currently, there are many experiments underway to detect WIMPs both directly and indirectly."

Many experiments underway to detect something virtually undetectable? --TC 02:27, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that line might use some rewording to make it less confusing. However there is nothing technically wrong or incorrect about it. WIMPs are (thought to be) extremely difficult to detect but not impossible and that is why so many sites around the world are looking for them. Virtually all of the methods used to detect WIMPs are strange and exotic, such as looking for flashes of light in bottles of cryogenic liquid xenon. There are many sites that explain the experiments in much higher detail than found here. Do a search for dark matter search or some simillar. Here [1] is a good article from physicsweb. --Deglr6328 03:11, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

You could say that if the dark matter is made of WIMPs, then the difficulty of detecting them can be anywhere from virtually impossible to just very, very difficult. I think the original author of that line must have meant something like "undetectable so far (modulo Dama)." I agree that these sentences could use a rewrite. --Reuben 18:18, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Query

In Theoretical Arguments, the size of WIMPs is referred to as having "Large mass compared with standard particles". Could some indication of how large be added? Duncan.france 23:03, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

There are quite a lot of possibilities. A reasonable range of interest is a few GeV up to several TeV, but you could imaging something a lot heavier and still call it a WIMP. The mass of a medium-sized atom is a good comparison for scale. --Reuben 01:04, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

As a non-nuclear physicist, how big are 'a few GeV, and several TeV'?

Also, how would one compare with a medium-sized atom? i.e. with what atoms (or ions) of which elements (?), and which mass/ionic radii??

Duncan.france 05:31, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Comment

As WIMPs are thoroughly hypothetical, I would prefer more conditional tenses used in this article e.g. 'could be', or 'would be' rather than 'are'. Duncan.france 23:03, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

• Agreed, for something hypothetical, it sure is presented as "fact." WIMPs are little better than other pseudoscience. I might also add, how does one expect to detect WIMPs via neutrinos? Neutrino detectors would generally detect ALL neutrinos, yes? So, if detecting "neutrinos from inside the earth," how do we know the neutrinos weren't A) produced outside the Earth, say by the sun... B) Produced in the Earth by a process OTHER than interacting WIMPs, etc. Likewise, when detecting solar neutrinos, how can we differentiate between neutrinos produced through solar fusion and through interactions with WIMPs? Are scientists biases beginning to show through in their act of telling us what they imagine they see in the data, rather than looking at the data itself and realizing it tells them noting even remotely close to what they think it will? Heck, we have enough problems detecting neutrinos in the first place. Certainly not enough based on initial theories of solar fusion, so scientists invented that problem away by speculating neutrinos "change flavors." Bollocks! Why must we keep putting falsification of bad models further and further away from our ability to TEST hypotheses? Gotta' wonder. Might want to clean up the article quite a bit, including clarifying exactly how measuring neutrinos tells us ANYTHING about where they came from or what produced them, let alone tell us anything about interactions prior tot he neutrino arriving at the detector or anything prior to the neutrino's emission from its source. From the description in the article, WIMPs seem like horrifically bad science used to defend horrifically bad science (Dark Matter), used to defend horrifically bad science (Big Bang), coming mostly from a horrifically bad oversight (redshift =/= distance for every instance of redshift; IE, Halton Arp has demonstrated relations, though GOOD but mostly ignored science, between objects of significantly different redshift, meaning that the redshift is intrinsic NOT cosmological, in those instances!) and thus a wrong assumption, which is unfortunately the basis of just about every modern construct in cosmology (leading to bad estimates of distance, absolute luminosity, mass, then onward to dark matter, WIMPs, MACHOs, etc.). Anywho. Mgmirkin 00:19, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, you can assume that nobody ever thought of any of these questions before, and go on about what a bunch of deluded clods astrophysicists are - or you could get reading. Whichever one you prefer. Here are some papers to get you started: indirect detection, solar neutrino experiments. A hint- compare the energy scales for solar neutrinos and neutrinos from WIMP annihilations. There are two big things you can do to help improve these articles: add references to relevant papers you come across in your reading, and add the {{fact}} tag to articles in places where a citation is needed. If you would like help finding papers for some of these topics, just come by my talk page. --Reuben 01:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

peopel and history

There is no mention of who coined the term or postulated their existence, or when they may have done so. -Ravedave 05:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

suggestions

This article needs some attention from an expert. It focuses only on detection, and doesn't do an adequate job of discussing theoretical or observational reasons for expecting that WIMPs might exist. It talks about how to make patterns of mass distribution of galaxies fit observations by inserting cold dark matter in a simulation, but doesn't discuss, e.g., cosmic microwave background measurements, which, IIRC, rule out baryons as the main form of dark matter. The following sentence doesn't make sense: "Although predicted scattering rates for WIMPs from nuclei are significant for large detector target masses,prediction that halo WIMPs may, as they pass through the Sun, interact with solar protons and helium nuclei." There is no real discussion of their possible particle-theoretical properties. Are they assumed to be fermions? If so, why? Are they their own antiparticles? Are they expected to come in families? The article refers to supersymmetry. Do WIMPS exist generically in all supersymmetric models? What kind of bosons would their supersymmetic partners be?--76.93.42.50 (talk) 03:45, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

WIMPS could be either bosons or fermions. If they are fermions, then they would be expected to be superpartners of the Z boson, the photon, or the neutral Higgs Boson (it's possible that the superpartners of those bosons may mix, forming superpositions, with the lightest one being a stable WIMP). If the graviton exists, then it would have a superpartner with spin 3/2, meaning that it could not mix with the previous three superpartners. The gravitino would probably interact only via gravity and so would be harder to observe than the other three.

If WIMPS are bosons, then they could be superpartners of the three neutrinos, with one superposition (the least massive one) being stable. Stonemason89 (talk) 16:47, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Possible WIMP discovery

They're no longer a "hypothetical" class of particles. In December 2009, researchers in the Soudan mine announced that they may have observed WIMPs. Stonemason89 (talk) 16:40, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Garbled sentence

Could someone with knowledge of the subject fix this sentence: "Although predicted scattering rates for WIMPs from nuclei are significant for large detector target masses, prediction that halo WIMPs may, as they pass through the Sun, interact with solar protons and helium nuclei."--agr (talk) 08:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I SO agree! In essence it reads: "Although predicted scattering rates… are significant… prediction that halo WIMPs may... interact with solar protons and helium nuclei."

1. "prediction" should surely either be plural, or written as "a prediction" or "the prediction"?

2. The expectation brought about by "Although" is never satisfied! Evidently there should be something after nuclei, PLEASE could someone fill it in? L0ngpar1sh (talk) 10:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Could discuss explanations proposed for conflicting results

Positive results have been reported from germanium detectors but not for xenon based detectors. The Nobile ref in further reading mentions isospin-violating couplings (DM interacting differently with protons and neutrons) as a possible explanation. There are probably better/later refs we could use. - Rod57 (talk) 12:22, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Annual modulation re direct detection

Could mention that collision-less DM will have slightly different annual modulation to self-interacting DM (eg as in Direct detection of self-interacting dark matter). - Rod57 (talk) 23:00, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

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