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Astroparticle physics

Dark matter remains elusive

Nature volume 542, pages 172–173 (2017)Cite this article

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WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, are the leading candidates for dark matter, the 'missing' mass in the Universe. An experiment has obtained no evidence for such particles, despite an impressive increase in sensitivity.

For almost a century, scientists have claimed that the Universe is filled with dark matter, a mysterious substance that is different from everything we see around us. Since the mid-1980s, detectors have been built to look for dark matter, under the assumption that it consists of entities known as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Although these experiments are now about 100,000 times more sensitive than originally, WIMPs have not been detected. Writing in Physical Review D, the XENON Collaboration (Aprile et al.)1 again reports a null result, using data obtained over four years from a liquid-xenon detector. The lack of a signal in such experiments has sparked much speculation about the nature of dark matter, and challenges the WIMP hypothesis.

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Figure 1: Dual-phase xenon detection technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and the Department of Physics, Xiangdong Ji is at the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute and the College of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China, University of Maryland, Maryland, USA.,

    Xiangdong Ji

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  1. Xiangdong Ji
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Correspondence to Xiangdong Ji.

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Ji, X. Dark matter remains elusive. Nature 542, 172–173 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/542172a

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