Wei Ji

Among the fundamental symmetries of nature, mirror parity holds a special place. The Standard Model already knows one violation of it, in the weak interaction, but hypothetical long-range forces that don't conserve left and right could reveal a lot about dark matter.

In the pitch darkness of a vacuum chamber, a tiny magnet floats. It touches no walls and loses almost no energy — an ideal sentinel, ready to catch the faintest nudge. Such a sentinel is exactly what you need for axion hunting. These particles are prime suspects in the case of the Universe's hidden mass, which we call dark matter.