Yet Another WIMP No-Show
The XENON1T experiment to search for WIMPs has now reported its latest and most comprehensive results: No WIMPs.
Here is a relevant summary.
“Researchers describe the results May 28 in two talks, one at Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, where XENON1T is located, and the other at the European particle physics lab CERN in Geneva. XENON1T had previously reported no hint of WIMPs using about a month’s worth of data (SN: 9/30/17, p. 17). The new study, however, was highly anticipated by physicists, as the longer search provided a better chance for spotting WIMPs.
As the WIMP window narrows, scientists are preparing to rev up the search, creating larger, more sensitive WIMP detectors, and moving on to search for other possible dark matter particles, such as axions (SN Online: 4/9/18).”
Note the rather curious responses to the results. (1) Build a bigger detector and look for the same class of hypothetical particles, which has been repeatedly tried without success. (2) Look for other hypothetical particles, which has been repeatedly tried without success.
No mention of the fact that searching for particle dark matter might be a fool’s errand. No mention of the empirically well-motivated candidate solution to the decades-long dark matter enigma: stellar-mass primordial black holes.