Do the laws of physics need major revision?
An international team of researchers has found new evidence that a subatomic particle appears to be disobeying the established laws of physics, reports The New York Times. The finding suggests there are forms of matter and energy in the universe that are not yet known to science. And it might lead to breakthroughs even more significant than the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson—the particle that gives others mass. “This is our Mars rover landing moment,” says lead researcher Chris Polly, from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill. The particle in question is the muon, which is similar to the electron but 207 times more massive and incredibly unstable. A 1998 experiment in which beams of muons were shot around a 50-foot magnetic racetrack at nearly the speed of light hinted that the particle’s own magnetic field deviates from the Standard Model, the rulebook physicists use to understand and explain subatomic goings-on. But that finding has never been replicated—until now. The new Fermilab experiment confirmed that the muons’ magnetic “spin” is 0.1 percent off what the Standard Model predicts—a giant discrepancy in the world of particle physics. Exactly what’s causing that discrepancy is the big question. “We think we might be swimming in a sea of background particles all the time that just haven’t been directly discovered,” says Polly. “There might be monsters we haven’t yet imagined that are emerging from the vacuum interacting with our muons.”