For many years, astronomers have puzzled over the identity of the 'dark matter' which they believe makes up between 90 and 99 per cent of the mass of the Universe. Now a scientist in the US claims that if the dark matter is made of a particular species of subatomic particles - known as weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs - then the particles might make their presence known by affecting the Sun's rotation.
WIMPs have also been invoked by astronomers to answer another serious astronomical problem: why the Sun emits fewer neutrinos than the theory of stellar interiors predicts. Neutrinos are produced in nuclear reactions at the Sun's centre.
If they exist in large numbers, WIMPs can explain the Sun's shortage of neutrinos because the Sun will capture the particles as it orbits around the Galaxy. WIMPs will drift around the Sun's interior, carrying heat out of the Sun's ...
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