{"id":242301,"date":"2026-08-06T16:51:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/using-the-earths-magnetic-field-to-hunt-for-axions-and-dark-photons"},"modified":"2026-08-06T16:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T21:51:37","slug":"using-the-earths-magnetic-field-to-hunt-for-axions-and-dark-photons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/using-the-earths-magnetic-field-to-hunt-for-axions-and-dark-photons","title":{"rendered":"Using the Earth\u2019s magnetic field to hunt for axions and dark photons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/using-the-earths-magnetic-field-to-hunt-for-axions-and-dark-photons.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dark matter\u2019s existence is all but certain\u2014astronomers believe it makes up about a quarter of the universe\u2019s total energy content\u2014yet its true identity has eluded us for decades. Two of the leading candidates for dark matter are the hypothetical particles ultralight axions and dark photons, which in the range studied here would be some 19 to 21 orders of magnitude lighter than the electron.<\/p>\n<p>Conventional axion searches tend to involve converting them into photons with the help of strong laboratory magnets. However, research in a laboratory inherently limits the space over which such a field can be applied.<\/p>\n<p>A collaborative team of researchers from Kyoto University, Hiroshima University and Nihon University realized that, by contrast, Earth\u2019s own magnetic field spans a scale no laboratory could match. Their paper is <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/ptep\/article\/doi\/10.1093\/ptep\/ptag108\/8704104\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dark matter\u2019s existence is all but certain\u2014astronomers believe it makes up about a quarter of the universe\u2019s total energy content\u2014yet its true identity has eluded us for decades. Two of the leading candidates for dark matter are the hypothetical particles ultralight axions and dark photons, which in the range studied here would be some 19 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}