Potential Dark Matter Detection via X-Rays from the Sun

posted by martyb on Sunday October 19 2014, @06:48AM

from the dark-matter-from-bright-sun dept.

Reports in The Guardian and Scientific American about the possible detection of dark matter, via observations of X-Rays from the Sun.

Researchers at Leicester University spotted the curious signal in 15 years of measurements taken by the European Space Agency’s orbiting XMM-Newton observatory. They noticed that the intensity of x-rays recorded by the spacecraft rose by about 10% whenever it observed the boundary of Earth’s magnetic field that faces towards the sun.

(The XMM Newton is an X-Ray Observatory in earth orbit, summarised at Wikipedia)

With no explanation in traditional physics, the scientists looked to more outlandish theories. One seemed to fit the bill. It called for theoretical particles of dark matter called axions streaming from the core of the sun and producing x-rays when they slammed into Earth’s magnetic field.

“If the model is right then it could well be axions that we are seeing and they could explain a component of the dark matter that everyone thinks exists,” Read told the Guardian.

Obviously this is fairly speculative at this point

“We found an unusual result that we can't explain by any conventional method, and this axion theory does explain it,” says co-author Andy Read, an astronomer at Leicester. “But it is just a hypothesis, and most hypotheses don't make it,” he adds.

The paper can be Downloaded from arXiv

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