Key Points
In the late 1960s and early 70s, such collisions broke apart protons and neutrons to reveal the elementary particles that make them up..
But after roughly 40 years of vain searches for these particlessearches that have almost entirely ruled out the chance that dark matter is made of ordinary WIMPsphysicists have become far more open-minded about what dark matter might be..
WIMPs also became a dark matter darling because of the WIMP miracle: Their hypothesized mass range and interactions fit the profile of one of the particles predicted by supersymmetry, an appealing hypothetical extension of the known elementary particles...
For physicists, this light dark matter is akin to seeing a familiar face in a foreign land: The proposed particles exist in a range of masses similar to those of ordinary matterelectron- to proton-size..
The origin story for ultralight dark matter particles depends on the particular theoretical model, but Toro says they would have arisen after the Big Bang, so the thermal-relic argument is irrelevant..
