THE middle of the night may not seem like the best time to study the sun, but if you’re looking for hypothetical lightweight particles called solar axions then it might be your best shot at a discovery. Zipping through the Earth straight from the sun’s core, many billions of these ghostly particles could be passing through your body every second.
Axions, if they exist, interact with matter too weakly to be detected directly, but a magnetic field should convert some into photons. Patrick Huber of CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, and Hooman Davoudiasl of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York,…
