The search for dark matter has been blown wide open

Decades of searching for weakly interacting massive particles have produced no detection, and physicists are now seriously reconsidering the theoretical landscape of dark matter candidates. Experiments running deep underground — in the Apennines, the Jinping Mountains, and a South Dakota mine — continue to push sensitivity limits with liquid xenon detectors, but the null results are themselves reshaping the field. This is a story about science doing what it should: updating priors in response to evidence, even when the evidence is an absence.