Strange Brew

Direct dark matter searches continue to increase their reach in the WIMP parameter space, searching for the scattering of dark matter particles with nuclei. In the case of spin independent elastic scattering, in order to compare the predictions from various particle physics models with the limits (or discovery) from a search, it is necessary to know how WIMPs couple to all quarks that make up the protons and neutrons with which the WIMPs will scatter. Currently, the dominant nuclear physics uncertainty is the strange quark content of the nucleon. In this talk, I'll review dark matter-nucleon scattering and discuss the sensitivity of direct dark matter searches to supersymmetric scenarios in some interesting limiting cases.