Traces of a Mysterious Particle Predicted Decades Ago May Have Been Detected
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
Traces of a Mysterious Particle Predicted Decades Ago May Have Been Detected:
Evidence of a long-sought hypothetical particle could have been hiding in plain (X-ray) sight all this time.
The X-ray emission coming off a collection of neutron stars known as the Magnificent Seven is so excessive that it could be coming from axions, a long-predicted kind of particle, forged in the dense cores of these dead objects, scientists have demonstrated.
If their findings are confirmed, this discovery could help unravel some of the mysteries of the physical Universe - including the nature of the mysterious dark matter that holds it all together.
[...] Axions are hypothetical ultra-low-mass particles, first theorised in the 1970s to resolve the question of why strong atomic forces follow something called charge-parity symmetry, when most models say they don't need to.
[...] "We're not claiming that we've made the discovery of the axion yet, but we're saying that the extra X-ray photons can be explained by axions," [astronomer Raymond] Co said. "It is an exciting discovery of the excess in the X-ray photons, and it's an exciting possibility that's already consistent with our interpretation of axions."
[...] "This starts to be pretty compelling that this is something beyond the Standard Model if we see an X-ray excess [other places], too," [physicist Benjamin] Safdi said.
Journal Reference:
Malte Buschmann, Raymond T. Co, Christopher Dessert, et al. Axion Emission Can Explain a New Hard X-Ray Excess from Nearby Isolated Neutron Stars [open], Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.021102)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.