Scientific American
Surprising new data from the Muon g-2 experiment are turning the classical model on its head
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In April a team of physicists at Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., announced anomalous behavior in the magnetic wiggle of the muon. The signal suggests that there may be other forces at work affecting the particle’s behavior besides those predicted by the Standard Model of physics (see “Long-Awaited Muon Measurement Boosts Evidence for New Physics”). But as physicist Sabine Hossenfelder outlines in her fascinating analysis of this finding, whether or not this discovery upends the classical rules depends on mind-bending statistics and higher-level calculations aided by computers to determine whether we have seen something significant or are merely observing a number- crunching fluke (see “Is the Standard Model of Physics Now Broken?”).