Of course, dark matter may not be Wimp-y. If it's not, one intriguing possibility is that the four forces of the Standard Model aren't the only way dark matter could interact with ordinary matter. The weak force is much weaker than the electromagnetic force, but there could be another so-called superweak force, which is negligible under most circumstances. One unpleasant possibility is that dark matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter at all, except through gravity. If that's the case, as with Wimps our best hope may be looking for dark matter annihilation. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station is currently surveying the skies for high-energy particles, or cosmic rays, and researchers have hinted that they have a big dark matter announcement coming in the next few weeks.
While a positive detection from AMS likely won't reveal the full identity of dark matter, it might help us determine whether our Wimp searches are doomed to failure or not. In the end, the Universe may demand a high level of cleverness from us if we are to have any hope of identifying what dark matter is, as opposed just to what it does. But if the search for the Higgs boson has taught us anything, it’s that we relish the challenge of detecting the seemingly undetectable, even if it takes decades to succeed.
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