Talk:Weakly interacting massive particle

message: 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)
thread_title: Neutralinos

message: 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)
replies: text: Okay, I re-arranged the article. Start blaming me... ;-) Awolf002 12:23, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: structure and cleanup

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

text: 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)
thread_title: weakly interacting

message: ...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)
thread_title:  I certainly DO think... 

message: 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)
thread_title:  In explaining WIMPs... 

message: "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)
replies: text: 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  is a good article from physicsweb. --Deglr6328 03:11, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Confusing line 

message: 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)
replies: text: * 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)
replies: text: 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  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)
thread_title:  Comment 

message: 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)
thread_title:  peopel and history 

message: 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)
thread_title: Possible WIMP discovery

message: 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)
thread_title:  Garbled sentence 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Could discuss explanations proposed for conflicting results 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Annual modulation re direct detection 

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