by the rotational dynamics of our galaxy.

Throughout most of our galaxy’s halo, however, inhomogeneities in the small scale dark matter distribution are not anticipated to be large. The vast majority of the dark matter in the inner regions of our galaxy has been in place for $\sim$$10^{10}$ years; ample time for the destruction of clumps through tidal interactions. Using high-resolution simulations, Helmi, White and Springel find that the dark matter in the solar neighborhood is likely to consist of a superposition of hundreds of thousands of dark matter streams, collectively representing a very smooth and homogeneous distribution [@white]. That being said, if we happen to find our Solar System residing in a overdense clump or stream of dark matter, high direct detection rates could lead us to mistakenly infer an artificially large WIMP-nucleon elastic scattering cross section.

The nuclear physics involved in WIMP-nuclei elastic scattering also introduces uncertainties which may ultimately limit the accuracy to which the dark matter’s couplings to the Standard Model can be measured. In many models, including many supersymmetric models, the WIMP-nucleon scattering cross section is dominated by the $t$-channel exchange of a Higgs boson. The coupling of the Higgs boson to the proton receives 