Wimp

Wimp (pronounced whimp)

(1) A weak, ineffectual, timid person.

(2) In particle physics, a speculative particle: Weakly Interacting Massive Particle.

(3) In computer science, a summary of the elements of the graphical user interface: (Windows, Icons, Menus (or Mice), Pointers.

For (1), 1915-1920, an Americanism of uncertain though thought generally to be related to whimper.  Word first used in 1920 but didn’t appear again until 1960 although wimpish persisted.  For (2) 1985-1990.  For (3) 1980, said to have been coined by computer scientist Merzouga Wilberts, about whom little appears to be known.

Big data

Based on the biggest data sets ever gathered, cosmologists use mathematics to calculate the actual parameters of the universe and the numbers which have emerged from the equations suggest some ninety percent of matter (or energy) has yet to be discovered, observed or defined.  One possibility is mechanical; the math is wrong.  The other explanation is the data is incomplete because or means of measuring or observing the cosmos is not able to see anything.  Scientists, as impressed as economists by the beauty of their mathematical models, prefer the later.  To account for all that’s “missing”, they speak of dark matter and dark energy and divide their energies between looking for the dark stuff and developing theories which might explain its nature.

Weakly interacting massive particles (wimps) emerged as one theory; a speculative particle thought wholly or partially to constitute dark matter.  A wimp interacts via gravity and any other forces and is inherently non-vanishing in its strength.  For the theory to work, wimps must date from the earliest moments of the Universe and be cold dark matter because modelling of a universe full of cold dark matter produces a distribution of galaxies close to what we today observe.  However, a simulation with hot dark matter reduces a universe to a sort of cosmic sludge.

Wimps may be out there.  Images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Although wimps remain wholly hypothetical, assuming the math is correct, wimps do successfully fill the astrophysical gaps and there is a near consensus today among cosmologists that most of the mass in the Universe is dark.  That said, the answer remains, “don’t know”.