Researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Illinois, have found new evidence to suggest that a subatomic particle called a muon does not follow known physical laws, such as The New York Times reports.
Muons are a lot like electrons, but 207 times as massive. They also tend to decay very quickly into electrons and superlight particles called neutrinos.
The team was exposed to an intense magnetic field by sending a 46-foot magnetic ring at Fermilab, and the team found that the muzzle wobbled in totally unpredictable ways, which was not expected at all, surprising researchers.
According to the Standard Model, the fundamental theory of how particles interact was established in the second half of the 20th century, these movements can normally be measured and predicted in extreme detail.
It is a watershed moment for the field of quantum physics. If confirmed, the results obtained through the experiments on Fermilab could rewrite the way we control the fundamental laws of physics – at least as we know it today.
“This amount we measure reflects the muon’s interactions with everyone else in the universe,” Renee Fatemi, a physicist at the University of Kentucky and director of the experiment, said in an official statement. “But if the theorists calculate the same amount, using all the known forces and particles in the standard model, we do not get the same answer.”
“This is strong evidence that the muon is sensitive to something that is not according to our best theory,” Fatemi added.
This begs the big question: what natural force makes the muon falter? Researchers suggest that these may be sources of matter and energy that have yet to be understood and that are not explained by the standard model – in other words, a fifth fundamental force of nature that can be added to gravity, electromagnetism, as well as strong and strong weak interactions between nuclei.
The new experiments, set out in a series of papers submitted to the journal Physical overview letters, confirms previous results found during experiments at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2001.
“After the twenty years that have passed since the Brookhaven experiment ended, it is so gratifying to finally solve this mystery,” Fermilab scientist Chris Polly, who worked on both experiments, said in the statement.
There’s still a chance that Fermilab’s new measurements are wrong: a chance at one in 40,000, to be exact. This means that scientists can not yet officially claim it as a discovery according to physics standards Times point it out.
Polly also said that only less than six percent of the data collected by the Fermilab experiments have been analyzed so far. “Although these first results tell us that there is an interesting difference with the Standard Model, we will learn a lot more in the next few years,” he said.
Of course, physicists around the world are excited. “Clearly this is very exciting, as it may indicate a future with new physical laws, new particles and a new force that we have not seen so far,” said the University of Manchester researcher and the British leader of the experiment Mark Lancaster said. BBC.
Cambridge University researcher Ben Allanach, who was not involved in the experiments, is hopeful that the results will eventually be confirmed. “My feeling of Spidey is tingling and telling me it’s going to be real,” he told the British broadcaster.
READ MORE: Findings from particle research could break known laws of physics [The New York Times]
More about particle physics: Antarctica hit by antimaterial particles, scientists say
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