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Larger objects are required to capture them into orbit.

So the gravity of the Sun is powerful enough to capture Jupiter, but it's not powerful enough to capture a sub-atomic particle. Do I have that right?

And even if these 'wimps' are traveling at near light speed, they should still be deflected by gravity the same way a bullet is deflected by Earths gravity. Newtons Laws apply to everything. Don't they?

L

"So the gravity of the Sun is powerful enough to capture Jupiter, but it's not powerful enough to capture a sub-atomic particle. Do I have that right?"That's right. The neutrinos fly out of the sun at huge rates and near the speed of light.

"And even if these 'wimps' are traveling at near light speed, they should still be deflected by gravity the same way a bullet is deflected by Earths gravity. Newtons Laws apply to everything. Don't they?"

Newton's law applies where the space can be approximated as flat. That is a good approx in the space throughout the solar system beyond say mercury.

Consider making a 200yd shot with a 22. It will be more of an artillery shot, than the same shot made with a 223. That's because the time they spend in reaching the target is smaller and the acceleration toward the Earth will be much smaller with the 223. A missile at twice the speed of the 223 will be deflected even less. The deflection of something flying near the speed of light will be unnoticeable.

What's really important is the x-section. I'm just going to pull rough numbers out of my head... The unit of area used for the x-section, or area of targets and particles in neclear physics is the barn. ...after broad side of the barn... A barn is 10^-24cm². Normal nuclear targets and particles have target sizes of barns and fractions of barns. The size of the target will depend on the interaction involved. If the interaction is weak(not refering to weak force), the x-section will be small and larger it's strong. The size difference is because the targets are components with processes involving different forces. Even the binding force, or particle is part of the target. Targets for neutrino interactions are much smaller, in the range of 10^-15 barns I think. With axions, the x-section is about zero and for simplicity undefined, because there are no interactions.

That means these WIMPS fly right through stuff. They'd be slightly accelerated on the way in, and retarded back to their original speed on the way out.

Keep in mind, that the distance between these targets, which are nuclei are at least 2000+ times larger than the target. So even though it looks dense, the volume of most stuff is empty space/vacuum. So the Earth really looks like a light cloud to a neutrino, and an axion see the Earth as nothing more than the vacuum with a tiny bump in the gravitational field.