Could muons rewrite the laws of physics? cosmosmagazine.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cosmosmagazine.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
4 hours ago
A mysterious magnetic property of subatomic particles called muons hints that new fundamental particles may be lurking undiscovered.
In a painstakingly precise experiment, muons’ gyrations within a magnetic field seem to defy predictions of the standard model of particle physics, which describes known fundamental particles and forces. The result strengthens earlier evidence that muons, the heavy kin of electrons, behave unexpectedly.
“It’s a very big deal,” says theoretical physicist Bhupal Dev of Washington University in St. Louis. “This could be the long-awaited sign of new physics that we’ve all hoped for.”
Muons’ misbehavior could point to the existence of new types of particles that alter muons’ magnetic properties. Muons behave like tiny magnets, each with a north and south pole. The strength of that magnet is tweaked by transient quantum particles that constantly flit into and out of existence, adjusting the muon’s magnetism by an amount kno
Long-Awaited Muon Measurement Boosts Evidence for New Physics
Initial data from the Muon g-2 experiment have excited particle physicists searching for undiscovered subatomic particles and forces
Print
The muon g-2 magnetic storage ring, seen here at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York before its 2013 relocation to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. Credit: Alamy
Advertisement
When hundreds of physicists gathered on a Zoom call in late February to discuss their experiment’s results, none of them knew what they had found. Like doctors in a clinical trial, the researchers at the Muon g-2 experiment blinded their data, concealing a single variable that prevented them from being biased about or knowing for years what the information they were working with actually meant.
Long-Awaited Muon Physics Experiment Nears Moment of Truth scientificamerican.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scientificamerican.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Share
Tokyo Tech’s Data Science for Particle and Nuclear Physics 2020 (DSPN2020), a lecture and practical training series for high school students, was held on six Saturdays between October and December 2020.
DSPN2020 participants on Day One
The online workshops, supported by Tokyo Tech’s STEM Education for Younger Generations fund, attracted twenty-one 1st and 2nd-year high schoolers from around Japan. The aim was to introduce the group to frontline accelerator experiments, and to offer practical experience in data science through the analysis of mainly open data from recent particle and nuclear physics experiments. Lectures and exercises were provided by faculty and students specializing in particle and nuclear physics, many of whom are affiliated with Tokyo Tech’s School of Science.