What if everything we know about dark matter is totally wrong?

What if everything we know about dark matter is totally wrong?

By Katia Moskvitch

And what if SuperCDMS finds nothing? There are a couple of other experiments here at the mine such as DEAP-3600 that use a slightly different technology – namely, a nobel gas called argon to try and detect the WIMPs. That’s where Walding works, and those detectors will continue searching for WIMPs alongside the new experiment.

But for Coderre, null results provide important feedback about the theory – and help adjust it. “Finding nothing is obviously disappointing, but when searching for something completely new you sort of have to accept that as a likely outcome,” he says. “There is a correct answer to the dark matter problem that’s currently hidden to us and we’re doing all we can to find it.”

And that means attacking the problem on many fronts. Several experiments in former and current mines, under mountains and in space are searching for WIMPs – and it’s the steady progress over decades that counts, slowly chipping away at the possible range of dark matter models. “SuperCDMS will very likely make solid progress on this front,” says Hooper, adding that the detector will focus specifically on a new mass region for the WIMPs, which would assume that they are much lighter than what other detectors have been looking for. And just because other experiments have failed does not make the odds of SNOLAB’s future resident succeeding any smaller, he adds, narrowing the range of possible dark matter candidates.

What if everything we know about dark matter is totally wrong?

By Katia Moskvitch

To quote the famous physicist Enrico Fermi: “If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.”

Reminds of the remark by Asimov. To paraphrase: The most important thing to say in science isn't eureka, it's huh, that's odd.