‘Tantalizing’ results from two experiments defy physics rule book
Preliminary results from two experiments suggest something could be wrong with the basic way physicists think the universe works, a prospect that has the field of particle physics both baffled and thrilled.
Tiny particles called muons aren’t quite doing what is expected of them in two long-running experiments in the United States and Europe. The confounding results — if proven right — reveal major problems with the rule book physicists use to describe and understand how the universe works at the subatomic level.
“We think we might be swimming in a sea of background particles all the time that just haven’t been directly discovered,” Fermilab experiment co-chief scientist Chris Polly said in a press conference. “There might be monsters we haven’t yet imagined that are emerging from the vacuum interacting with our muons, and this gives us a window into seeing them.”
The rule book, called the Standard Model, was developed about 50 years ago. Experiments performed over decades affirmed over and again that its descriptions of the particles and the forces that make up and govern the universe were pretty much on the mark. Until now.
“New particles, new physics might be just beyond our research,” said Wayne State University particle physicist Alexey Petrov. “It’s tantalizing.”
The United States Energy Department’s Fermilab announced results Wednesday of 8.2 billion races along a track outside Chicago that while ho-hum to most people have physicists astir: The muons’ magnetic fields don’t seem to be what the Standard Model says they should be. This follows new results published last month from the European Center for Nuclear Research’s Large Hadron Collider that found a surprising proportion of particles in the aftermath of high-speed collisions.
Researchers need another year or two to finish analyzing the results of all of the laps around the 50-foot (14-meter) track. If the results don’t change, it will count as a major discovery, said Graziano Venanzoni, an experimental physicist at an Italian national lab.