The Muon g-2 ring sits in its detector hall amidst electronic shelves, the muon beam line and other equipment. This experiment works at minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit and studies the precession (or wobble) of muons as they move through the magnetic field.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
If you fire up the Large Hadron Collider and use the highest power worldwide to scrape together a few ordinary particles, you can not only create an astonishing impact force of 13 tera electron volts. You may also find that you have produced a subatomic particle whose strange wobble can completely break the laws of physics.
It is called a muon. And on Wednesday, researchers from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory sent shock waves through the world of particle physics when they found that this modest piece of quantum-curious existence could illuminate the fabric of the universe in a way we have never seen before. has since the discovery of the Higgs boson almost a decade ago.
At 207 times larger than electrons, the magnetic moons radioactively decay at 2.2 millionths of a second, making them unlikely candidates for an explosive physics discovery, according to a report in the New York Times on Wednesday. In the standard model of particle physics, which explains how the universe’s elementary particles interact, we have very strict calculations about how moons should move.
But during experiments in the Fermi Lab, researchers noticed that the muzzle wobbled strangely. So strange that the wobbles regularly defy the world’s most hyper-specific measurements and are in conflict with the standard model. They seem to be influenced by what physicists say could be forces beyond those currently known.
“This amount we are measuring reflects the interaction of the muon with everyone else in the universe,” said Renee Fatemi, a physicist at the University of Kentucky, in a release. “This is strong evidence that the muon is sensitive to something that is not in our best theory.”
In quantum physics, a theory holds that particles can suddenly appear and affect an item with which they interact before disappearing again. Researchers working on muons say the small variations in the muons’ wobbles can be attributed to the influence of a potential host of these ‘virtual particles’.
Although the findings in 2013 and 2018 followed in the footsteps of similar experiments, even more research is needed to give the latest results. The researchers note that the chance that the muon is wobbly is a statistical luck, about one in 40,000 – which in scientific conversations equates to a confidence level of ‘4.1 sigma’. Physicists are usually not satisfied until the confidence level reaches 5 sigma.
In the meantime, however, you can find more information about the staggering muzzles by watching Fermilab’s usual people-friendly video interpreter.
Read more: CERN wants to build a new $ 23 billion super-collider that is 100 kilometers long