Unusual x-ray signal could be sign of axions, a potential form of dark matter

Nature : Axions are hypothetical, uncharged, extremely light particles that were originally proposed to explain the absence of CP violation in the strong nuclear force. The particles were later adopted by theorists as a potential form of dark matter, and now, they may have been detected. George Fraser of the University of Leicester, UK, and his colleagues analyzed 12 years of x-ray data collected by the European Space Agency’s X-Ray Multi Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) as it orbited Earth. They found an unexplained surplus of x rays as the satellite passed between Earth and the Sun. After ruling out all known possible causes, Fraser’s team proposes that the surplus could be caused by axions from the Sun being transformed into x-ray photons by Earth’s magnetic field. They have also found tentative evidence of the same signal in data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory , but several more years of data are needed to confirm the signal. Even if the signal holds up, the cause could lie in the physics of the Sun’s x-ray emitting corona rather than in the transformation of axions into x rays.