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Article: Votes cast for and against the WIMP factor.(weakly interacting massive particles)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- February 26, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Physicists this week duked it out over a bunch of WIMPs.
One team reported that it might have detected several of these hypothetical elementary particles, while another team presented evidence to the contrary. The new findings have generated intense interest because detection of the particles, called both WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) and neutralinos, could settle a decades-old mystery in cosmology and help unify the four fundamental forces of physics.
WIMPs are among several candidates for the unseen material, or dark matter, believed to make up at least 90 percent of the mass in the universe. Numerous studies have revealed that rapidly ...