Blog

WIMPs and DAMA: The debate continues

By Hamish Johnston

Did they see WIMPS, or didn’t they?

The question of whether the DAMA and DAMA/LIBRA experiments in Italy have seen evidence of dark matter in the form of “weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPs) has hung over the dark matter community for the past eight years.

The DAMA team has measured a very strong annual modulation in the signal from their detectors — which they ascribe to the motion of the Earth through our galaxy’s halo of dark matter.

However, other dark-matter searches have failed to confirm their result. The latest, being posted on the arXiv preprint server by researchers using a new detector buried somewhere under Chicago.

Physics World’s Italy correspondent Edwin Cartlidge will be delving deep into the controversy surrounding the DAMA result in the next issue of the magazine. Stay tuned for much more.

Posted by Hamish Johnston on Jul 14, 2008 4:18 PM | Permalink