Scientists have recently observed Transient Luminous Events (TLE’s) known as Red Sprites, Blue Jets and Elves. These are names for upper atmospheric optical phenomena associated with lightning. Sprites show up as balls of light with tentacles. They appear for a couple of milliseconds and then disappear. ELVES exist for an even shorter timespan. In the last few days, scientists have also observered that these objects are shooting beams of antimatter into space.
All life requires energy to power itself. Humans use chemical energy by absorbing plants. Plants use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into chemical energy. All energy on Earth originally comes from the sun (ignoring small amounts of geothermal energy). The sun generates inconceivable amounts of energy every second.
Life on earth is basically various collections of chemicals competing over who consumes the most chemical energy and who can replicate the most. Intelligence is an adaptation that became very successful by modeling the world around it and reacting in a smart way. Imagine if some kind of darwinian evolutionary system takes place inside (or on the surface of) the sun, where collections of energy compete to consume and process other energy. Potentially this system could generate intelligent lifeforms. These lifeforms would mostly consist of light energy. They would operate on an incredibly fast time span as they have no chemical reactions to slow them down, so that one millisecond is centuries to them. In the same way that an oak tree that exists over centuries is not cognizant of the humans that flit around it, we would be unable to detect light creatures that appear and disapper in the blink of an eye.
These creatures could be observing us from the upper atmosphere and using some kind of faster-than-light antimatter beam technology to communicate with each other. Maybe the real action in the universe is happening in the stars. We are just a slowed down, side-effect reality. Perhaps early man was right to worship the sun.
Where it gets interesting is how these sun creatures might interact with us. Cosmic rays that are shot from the sun basically drive evolution. They could directly manipulate our DNA in order to evolve life. Perhaps earth life is like a garden that they are cultivating. In the same way that we might create life via robots, they have given life to the solid world via photosynthesis. Nobody really understands how chlorophyl can turn sunlight into chemical energy – perhaps that is an alien technology?
Power of the Unknown 
1) Antimatter is still limited by the universal constant – the speed of light. Therefore it cannot be used to send information at higher speeds.
2) Intelligence is, as you state, an adaptation: it does NOT simply come about if energy is being produced. The elements in the sun are not suitable for building any kind of body in which intelligence may be housed.
£) the aforementioned process leaves no possibility of an inheritance system whereby lifeforms could pass on their physiological structure. Every “creature” would be generated anew. This is so improbable it may as well be called impossibile.
4) The Uncertainty Principle would prevent accurate firing of protons (cosmic rays) across ANY distance in order to hit a specified molecule – to say nothing of the 93,000,000 miles between these two entities.
5) We actually have quite a good idea of how plants convert solar energy into chemical and thermal energy. Start here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis