5 ms·
IANAP, but wouldn't confirmation of the existence of supersymmetric WIMPs not necessarily prove that they account for a large portion of dark matter? EDIT: Not
by simon_ 17y ago
IANAP, but wouldn't confirmation of the existence of supersymmetric WIMPs not necessarily prove that they account for a large portion of dark matter?
EDIT: Not to imply that it wouldn't be a huge deal anyway.
- hugh_ 17y agoIAAP,BNTRTOP but I assume you could count how many you detect to get a reasonable idea of how common they are in this part of the universe, at least. Then you could adjust it for the fact that WIMPs tend to prefer to hang out in gravity wells, like around here, and get a pretty good idea of the overall distribution. I haven't done the maths, but if you're detecting _any_ of 'em then they've got to be reasonably common, since they should be relatively uniformly distributed throughout the galaxy. What I didn't understand until just now was this: if WIMPs interact by gravity why don't they fall into stars and planets, or even form stars and planets of their own? The answer is that they do fall into stars and planets, but just keep going through the middle (since they are not subject to any ordinary interactions) and out the other side. And they can't form dark-matter planets of their own since they don't interact strongly with each other either, so they won't stick together. Neato!
- rms 17y agoBNTRTOP?
- JacobAldridge 17y agoBut Not The Really Top Order Physicist? Boy, Newton Totally Responded To Our Planet? Basically, Nobody Trusts RMS To Out-think PG?
- hugh_ 17y agoThe others who said "but not the right type of physicist" correctly ascertained my meaning, though yours are all quite accurate as well.
- carbocation 17y agoI was imagining, "But not the relevant type of physicist." Excellent new acronym.
- samdk 17y agoI'm pretty sure it's something to the effect of: But Not The Right Type Of Physicist.
- gruseom 17y agoBut not the right type of physicist. This is amusing: http://www.google.ca/search?q=BNTRTOP http://www.google.ca/search?q=BNTRTOP Also amusing is that if you refresh it, you see from the "x minutes ago" part just how often the crawler is picking it up.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]