The collapse of the Standard Model - the wobble of a tiny particle violates known laws of physics

So the long-awaited moment has come - on thisweek scientists announced the existence of elementary particles unknown to science and the interactions between them, which are vital for the nature and evolution of space. Our regular readers will probably know that there has been a growing body of evidence lately that a tiny subatomic particle does not seem to obey the known laws of physics. The new discovery, which we will talk about in this article, opens the door to the unknown in our understanding of the Universe. According to the American theoretical physicist Michio Kaku on Twitter, the results indicate that the muon (found in cosmic rays) and the electron - which should be identical - appear to have different properties. This can be evidence of the existence of some "higher theory of physics, including new particles, and at the same time be a confirmation of string theory." And yet, not all scientists are so optimistic.

Muon ring g-2 at the National Acceleratorlaboratory named after Enrico Fermi (Fermilab, USA), works at a temperature of minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit and studies the oscillations of muons when passing through a magnetic field.

Content

• 1 Goodbye Standard Model?
• 2 What is Muon
• 3 How physicists discovered the anomaly
• 4 New physics

Goodbye Standard Model?

The fact that one new discovery is probably the most important for modern physics is written by all the world's media. Still, experiments with particles known as muons show that there are forms of matter and energy unknown to science... Despite amazing success in explaining the fundamental particles and forces that make up the universe, the description of the Standard Model remains woefully incomplete.

Firstly, it does not take into account gravity and exactlyis also silent about the nature of dark matter, dark energy and neutrino masses. To explain these phenomena and more, scientists searched for New Physics (physics beyond the Standard Model), investigating anomalies in which experimental results diverge from theoretical predictions.

What is Muon

Muon Is an unstable elementary particle withnegative charge, similar to an electron, but much heavier. It is an integral element of space. The researchers note that these fundamental particles are tiny magnets spinning around their own axis.

Researchers at the National AcceleratorEnrico Fermi Laboratories (Fermilab, USA) in the course of the Muon g-2 experiment wanted to obtain accurate measurements of the oscillation of magnetic muons when passing through a magnetic field. If the experimental value of the magnetic moment of these particles differs from the theoretical prediction - an anomaly - this deviation could be a sign of a new physics in which the muon is influenced by a subtle and unknown particle or force.

“This is our rover landing moment,” Chris Polly, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where the research is conducted, told The New York Times.

Recently updated experimental valuefor muons, published in Physical Review Letters, deviates from theory by only a negligible amount (0.00000000251) and has a statistical significance of 4.2 sigma. Scientists need to achieve 5 sigma for complete confidence. But even this tiny amount can dramatically change the direction of particle physics.

According to Scientific American, with suchthe statistical significance of sigma, researchers cannot yet say that they made a discovery. But the evidence for a new physics in muons - coupled with anomalies recently observed in the Beauty Large Hadron Collider (LHCb) experiment at CERN near Geneva - is impressive and provocative. Read more about this discovery in our material.

How physicists discovered the anomaly

Imagine each muon as tinyanalog clock. As the particle orbits the magnet, its hour hand rotates at the rate predicted by the Standard Model. When the muon expires, it decays into a positron, which is emitted in a clockwise direction. But if that arrow turns at a different speed from the theoretical one — say, too fast — the decay of the positron will end up pointing in a slightly different direction. (In this analogy, the hour hand corresponds to the spin of the muon, the quantum property that determines the direction of muon decay.) Find enough deflecting positrons and you have an anomaly.

When a muon travels through space, that space is actually a hissing and swarming soup of an infinite number of virtual particles that can appear and disappear.

The muon g-2 particle storage ring in the MC-1 building at Fermilab.

However, what this anomaly implies isambiguous. Perhaps something is not taken into account by the Standard Model, and it could be the difference between electrons and muons. Or, a similar effect can be observed in electrons, which are currently too small to be seen. Recall that the mass of a particle is related to how much it can interact with heavier unknown particles, so muons, whose mass is about 200 times the mass of electrons, are much more sensitive.

Scientists also reported that the likelihood thatthe measurements obtained may be by chance equal to one in 40,000. This is significantly less than the gold standard required for an official discovery by the standards of physics, and the results obtained by the researchers represent only 6 percent of the total data that the muon experiment is expected to collect in the next years.

See also: Scientists come closer to understanding why the universe exists

New physics

Sensational discovery by researchers from Fermilabis an important link in our understanding of what may lie outside the Standard Model, but there is no infinite space for theorists looking for a new physics to explore. Any theory that tries to explain the results of a muon experiment must also take into account the absence of new particles during research at the LHC at CERN.

Inspection of the muon ring g-2 in 2013.

Interestingly, in some of the proposedToday's theories The universe contains several types of Higgs bosons, not just the one included in the Standard Model. Other theories cite exotic "leptoquarks" that cause new kinds of interactions between muons and other particles. But since many of the simplest versions of these theories have already been ruled out, physicists "have to think in unconventional ways," writes National Geographic.

However, like Fermilab, the LHCb experiment needs more data before claiming a new discovery. But even now, the combination of these two results keeps physicists from sleeping well.

The next step in this direction of research isrepeat the results obtained. Fermilab's findings are based on the first run of the experiment, which ended in mid-2018. The team is currently analyzing data from two additional launches. If this data is similar to the data obtained during the first launch, it may be enough to make the anomaly a full-scale discovery by the end of 2023.

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Physicists have also begun to scrutinizepredictions of the Standard Model, especially in places where it is known to be difficult to compute. New supercomputers should also help in this difficult endeavor, but it will still take years to sift through these subtle differences and see how they affect the hunt for new physics.

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku shared his thoughts on the latest discoveries on his Twitter.

Also, one cannot fail to note the reaction to the lastdiscoveries of famous theoretical physicists on Twitter. Michio Kaku, for example, believes that the results obtained can also serve as confirmation of string theory. How string theory became one of the greatest hopes of theoretical physics, and then fell into long-term decline, we talked about in this article. I recommend reading.