No, things are currently not looking good for WIMPs, the first hypothetical particle once thought to be a promising candidate for dark matter. It is true that a research team has been using the DAMA experiment at Gran Sasso National Laboratory to prove it for years. However, the international research community has always been skeptical – and this skepticism is likely to be correct. because a Study published in the journal » Science Advances « suggests that whatever the DAMA experiment shows, WIMPs are probably not.
On the one hand, that’s a shame, because it means researchers still don’t know what dark matter is made of. It is said to make up the majority of all matter in the universe, which has significantly influenced the formation of structures in the universe and is said to keep our galaxies from flying apart to this day. It’s sad that dark matter is only observable through gravity – and otherwise does not interact at all or, at most, interacts very little with the rest, visible matter.
On the other hand, the findings of Govinda Adhikari’s working group from the University of California San Diego are a good example of how science really works. Although the DAMA collaboration has been claiming for years that it has definitively found signals from WIMP, it has been reluctant to share its raw data with the professional world. Other dark matter detectors that WIMP is looking for have found no such signals. However, some of these detectors work with other materials and seek to detect interactions between WIMP and the atoms of the noble gas xenon. DAMA, on the other hand, uses special sodium iodide crystals.
Cosine tests DAMA’s dark matter
In order to actually independently test the DAMA results, a detector had to be found that worked with similar crystals. And one of these is in South Korea and it’s called a cosine. It is specifically designed to confirm or disprove DAMA results. In 2018, the participating researchers ended :Cosine cannot reproduce the DAMA signal after about 60 days of observation.
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