axions everywhere

Read an article about a German-Hungarian team of researchers, led by Fodor and Jülich, who used a supercomputer to create a large-scale model of the distribution of dark matter based on gravitational lensing observations. This may help scientists to look in areas where dark matter may be concentrated.

Considering various physical considerations, scientists are leaning to extremely light particles, dubbed axions, being the most promising candidates that make up dark matter. Axions are predicted by an extension to quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and they should be about ten billion times lighter than electrons. And that would require, on average, every cubic centimetre of the universe to contain ten million axions. But dark matter is not spread out evenly; rather it forms clumps and branches of a web-like structure.

Within the next few years, scientists should be possible to confirm or rule out the existence of axions experimentally.