WIMPs as Dark Matter

                                                                             

'WIMPs as Dark Matter'

Many different hypothetical particles have been proposed to explain dark matter. one of the most popular among them is the concept of 'Weakly Interacting Massive Particles' or WIMPs making up dark matter. WIMPs are so called because they rarely interact with normal matter. WIMPs are believed to interact with baryonic matter through gravity (as does dark matter), and are also expected to interact very slightly through a force known as the weak nuclear force that is involved in radioactivity.
                                                               

Cosmologists have carried out computer simulations which show that dark matter made of WIMPs would produce structures that are very similar to what we actually observe in the universe. According to scientists, if WIMPs really do interact through the nuclear force, it should be possible to detect them directly using sensitive underground detectors. There must be many dark matter particles passing through the Earth all time - occasionally, one may be interacting with a (liquid) molecule, producing a tiny flash of light and new decay particles. By looking for these tell-tale flashes and working out the identity of the decay particles produced in the reaction, it may be possible to deduce the identity of dark matter itself.