Enigma of Dark Matter: Does it really matter?

One of the profound scientific ambiguities of the 21st century is to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy which, according to large scale Astrophysical observations and cosmological estimates, consist of more than 90% of the mass-energy content of the Universe. The astrophysical estimates of the total dynamical mass content come from interpretation of the large scale motion of stellar objects in the galaxies and other aggregations of the Universe. But the estimate of the visible mass content originates from direct observations of electromagnetic radiation across the multi-wavelength range emitted by the astronomical objects. Cosmological observations and theoretical estimates on the large scale temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), evidence of formation of large scale structure in the Universe and observed abundance of baryonic matter lead us to the conclusion that a) more than 80% of the gravitating average mass is invisible or ‘dark’, and b) the nature of the invisible matter is non-baryonic and requires to invoke ideas of new physics beyond the standard model. At the same time, it has eluded direct or indirect detection in the terrestrial experiments involving possible interaction of the particle dark matter candidates with active mass of a detector under observation. Direct detection of the DM candidates, conjectured as some kind of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), with mass spanning in the range of a few GeVs to several TeVs, is one of the most challenging goals in contemporary physics, which involves multidisciplinary endeavors and development of new techniques. A review of the dark matter problem, related search scenario and our initiative in this direction will be presented for the non-specialists in this talk.