12 January 2015

WIMPs

Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs, are another theoretical groups of objects that may be part of dark matter. WIMPs can be found in both the halo as well as the disk, so can contribute to the mass distribution of the galaxy.


What exactly are WIMPs? They are particles with mass (which does mean they have star-sized or even planet sized mass, but on the order of subatomic particles) that love to play tag (and they are never "it"). These particles have a small cross-section that would allow interactions with other particles. In other words, these are neutrinos with a much larger mass.
The only forces that affect WIMPs are gravity (obviously), but also the weak nuclear force (the force that keeps the nucleus of an atom intact. Because of this, these particles are extremely hard to detect, but cannot be directly observed...yet.

No comments:

Post a Comment