Published in Physics World, 18 Feb 2009
Less than three weeks after physicists spotted a tentative signature for axions, another research group is claiming to have “the strongest evidence yet” of the hypothetical particles. The new evidence, which again appears in astrophysical data, puts more pressure on Earth-bound experiments to find a signal.
Axions were first proposed in the late 1970s to solve an issue in particle physics known as the strong-CP problem. If they exist they would be very light and interact very weakly with matter, but these properties have made them difficult to find. No experiment on Earth has yet discovered any evidence of the particles. […]
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