Hints of dark matter reported, again

But detectors differ on whether WIMPs have been spotted

In the war of the WIMPs, a new combatant has joined the fray. The CRESST-II experiment has seen hints of the weakly interacting massive particles, a leading candidate for the hidden dark matter thought to account for most of the universe’s matter.

The new results, reported September 6 at the International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics in Munich, add controversy to an already contentious field that is divided into two camps: those that have seen signs of the particles and those that haven’t.