That would be pretty disappointing, but as far as I understand it, entirely possible. There are three ways to detect dark matter: 1. scattering in a lab 2. a

That would be pretty disappointing, but as far as I understand it, entirely possible. There are three ways to detect dark matter: 1. scattering in a lab 2. annihilation products observed with a telescope 3. gravitational effects We've seen 3, and we'll probably get a huge amount more detail on the distribution of dark matter through that method as time goes on. That would already be pretty convincing to me. People have been looking for both 1 and 2 for a while, without any conclusive detection. But it's easy to write down theories of dark matter that are extremely difficult to detect with those methods. At some point, we may have to accept that the only way to detect dark matter is method 3, through gravitational effects.