Boffins thick as treacle
Boffins’ Big Bang theory is flawed
SCIENTISTS who have for generations told us how the universe works have made a lifechanging discovery – they got it wrong.
Physicists found their theory explaining how “building blocks” of the universe work together is flawed. They realised the blunder by discovering a new “force of nature” which means particles that make up all matter don’t actually react and decay the way researchers thought they did.
For decades the boffins had relied on a theory called the “standard model” which describes all the particles in the universe and how they interact.
But experiments to make trillions of these particles collide have revealed there’s previously undiscovered force out there.
They were expecting a particle called the “beauty quark” to decay and break down into equal numbers of smaller particles called electrons and muons.
But it produced more electrons – which means there’s an unknown force out there in the universe.
It could unlock the mysteries of space and even explain the nature of gravity. Konstantinos Petridis from the University of Bristol said: “Discovering a new force is the holy grail of particle physics.
“Our current understanding of the constituents of the Universe fall remarkably short. We do not know what 95% of the universe is made of.’’
The discovery followed 10 years of studying how particles smaller than atoms collided in a tunnel beneath the Swiss-french border, called the Large Hadron Collider. Dr Mitesh Patel of Imperial College London said: “We were shaking when we saw the results. We were that excited.”