Weakly interacting massive particle

In astronomy, WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, figure into one explanation of the dark matter problem.

The particles are called "weakly interacting" because they seem not to have much interaction with normal matter (electrons, protons, and neutrons)

other than gravitational attraction (thus "massive").

---

WIMP also stands for the "window, icon, menu, pointing device" paradigm that characterizes most commercial graphical user interfaces from 1984 to the present (as of October 2001).