The moment of truth for WIMP dark matter

We know that dark matter constitutes 85 per cent of all the matter in the Universe, but we do not know of what it is made. Amongst the many dark matter candidates proposed, WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) occupy a special place, because they arise naturally from new theories that seek to extend the standard model of particle physics. With the advent of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and a new generation of astroparticle experiments, the moment of truth has come for WIMPs: either we will discover them in the next five to ten years, or we will witness their inevitable decline.