On cue for you today the announcement of the discovery of the Weyl fermion by two different groups
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-year-massless-particle-next-generation-electronics.htmlhttp://phys.org/news/2015-07-weyl-years.htmlhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semic...ter-electronicsBackground how the Weyl fermion fits into QFT.
http://www.quora.com/Quantum-Field-Theory/What-is-a-Weyl-fermionThey have long been sought after because they give you the equivalent to superconductivity at room temperature.
There is no indication of whether these things are likely to show up in the wider universe.
Everyone is hassling the experts in the "standard model and beyond" for that answer as it is outside the realm of QFT/QCD
Lubos Motl covered it superficially back in an article in 2010
http://motls.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/beauty-of-dirac-equation-and-its.htmlThe Weyl fermion interpretation is preferred if we want to preserve the symmetry that rotates the phases of the left-handed and right-handed fermions differently; such a symmetry prohibits the Majorana mass terms.
Watch what insights the theorists can give but in general massless particles must be massless for a reason and of coarse there are versions of string theory that predict it, which will get a lot of interest now.
Using the tools of QFT it was always known you could not show that massless charged fermions did not exist and hence the search so a hint of physics beyond the standard model.
Given you know the basics as a layman now, I would be interested in your evaluation of the different science media articles on it.
