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For decades physicists have tried to rectify the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which is great at describing the behavior of particles, interactions, and quantum processes on the micro scale, with gravity...the Standard Model, as it is currently constructed, fails to account for gravity at this extremely small scale. ...a number of mathematical models have been proposed that would unify these disparate phenomena, including something called string theory [and] a number of these models feature elements that can be tested in a lab setting. One is known as the Pauli exclusion principle. Pauli exclusion basically means that no two electrons...

The long-awaited first results from the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory show fundamental particles called muons behaving in a way that is not predicted by scientists’ best theory, the Standard Model of particle physics. This landmark result, made with unprecedented precision, confirms a discrepancy that has been gnawing at researchers for decades. The strong evidence that muons deviate from the Standard Model calculation might hint at exciting new physics. Muons act as a window into the subatomic world and could be interacting with yet undiscovered particles or forces. “Today is an extraordinary...

Update (24 March 2021): The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment is still insisting there's a flaw in our best model of particle physics. As explained below, previous results comparing the collider's data with what we might expect from the Standard Model threw up a curious discrepancy by around 3 standard deviations, but we needed a lot more information to be confident it truly reflected something new in physics. Newly released data have now pushed us closer to that confidence, putting the results at 3.1 sigma; there's still a 1 in 1,000 possibility that what we're seeing is the result...

LHCb experiment cavern at LHC. Credit: CERN Imperial physicists are part of a team that has announced ‘intriguing’ results that potentially cannot be explained by our current laws of nature. The LHCb Collaboration at CERN has found particles not behaving in the way they should according to the guiding theory of particle physics – the Standard Model. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that particles called beauty quarks, which are measured in the LHCb experiment, should decay into either muons or electrons in equal measure. However, the new result suggests that this may not be happening, which could point...

IT TRIGGERED A SUBATOMIC CASCADE — AND COULD HAVE AN AVALANCHE OF IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF PHYSICS.Crash Course Scientists have now confirmed that an unusually powerful particle of antimatter crashed down into Antarctica back in December 2016. The collision seems to have triggered a subatomic cascade effect called Glashow resonance, Live Science reports, which is a theoretical phenomenon that requires more energy to set off than even the most powerful particle accelerators can provide. Scientists didn’t expect to see tangible evidence of Glashow resonance, but now that they have it helps further confirm the Standard Model of subatomic physics....

On December 6, 2016, a high-energy particle called an electron antineutrino hurtled to Earth from outer space at close to the speed of light carrying 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) of energy. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a particle that quickly decayed into a shower of secondary particles. The interaction was captured by a massive telescope buried in the Antarctic glacier, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. IceCube had seen a Glashow resonance event, a phenomenon predicted by Nobel laureate physicist Sheldon Glashow in 1960. With this detection, scientists provided another confirmation of...

The death of this reigning physics paradigm, the Standard Model, has been predicted for decades. There are hints of its problems in the physics we already have. Strange results from laboratory experiments suggest flickers of ghostly new species of neutrinos beyond the three described in the Standard Model. And the universe seems full of dark matter that no particle in the Standard Model can explain. But recent tantalizing evidence might one day tie those vague strands of data together: Three times since 2016, ultra-high-energy particles have blasted up through the ice of Antarctica, setting off detectors in the Antarctic Impulsive...

A MYSTERIOUS supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy is spitting high energy particles after being fed by an object that has never been seen before. The baffling phenomenon has put existing theoretical models on their head, and astrophysicists are puzzled as to what is creating such a regular excretion of material from within the bowels of this supermassive black hole. According to the paper titled, 'Nine-hour X-ray quasi-periodic eruptions from a low-mass black hole galactic nucleus', the energy erupts from the black hole every nine hours and last for one hour and it's that precision which has baffled scientists.

When it comes to physics, fewer things are more exciting than proving something wrong. Proving theories wrong has led to entirely new fields of study. The fruits that come from wrongness can be so rewarding that scientists devote a considerable amount of time to probing well-known theories, hoping to find a crack. But a team of JILA physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, Boulder is reporting that, once again, the theory was right—specifically, the Standard Model of particle physics and its prediction of just how spherical the distribution of an electron’s charge...

Physicists Discover a Possible Break in the Standard Model of PhysicsIn order to make sense of the physical world, scientists have worked hard to discover theories and principles that govern the physics of matter. This is what’s called the Standard Model of Physics, which includes all the laws and principles concerning matter in all its forms and sizes. Bascially, the Standard Model applies to even particle physics. Or so it should. Scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara (USCB) and colleagues from various other institutions have recently discovered that there might be a break in the application of...

Ever since the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, the Large Hadron Collider has been dedicated to searching for the existence of physics that go beyond the Standard Model. To this end, the Large Hardon Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) was established in 2016, specifically for the purpose of exploring what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and create the Universe as we know it. Since that time, the LHCb has been doing some rather amazing things. This includes discovering five new particles, uncovering evidence of a new manifestation of matter-antimatter asymmetry, and (most recently) discovering...

The gigantic accelerator in Europe has produced hints of an exotic particle that defies the known laws of physics. A little wiggle on a graph, representing just a handful of particles, has set the world of physics abuzz. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, the largest particle accelerator on Earth, reported yesterday that their machine might have produced a brand new particle not included in the established laws of particle physics known as the Standard Model. Their results, based on the data collected from April to November after the LHC began colliding protons at nearly twice the...

Scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) have calculated that the meson f0(1710) could be a very special particle -- the long-sought-after glueball, a particle composed of pure force. The prediction that glueballs exist is one of the most important of the Standard Model of particle physics that has not yet been confirmed experimentally. For decades, scientists have been looking for so-called "glueballs". Now it seems they have been found at last. A glueball is an exotic particle, made up entirely of gluons -- the "sticky" particles that keep nuclear particles together. Glueballs are unstable and can only be detected indirectly, by...

A Japanese scientist has won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. Takaaki Kajita proved that neutrinos have mass. The neutrino is an elementary particle consisting of matter. Kajita observed neutrinos at a facility deep underground. He was part of a team that detected that some of the particles change to different types of neutrino. That proved neutrinos have mass. The discoveries were revealed at an international conference in 1998. His work surprised researchers all around the world because it disproved the established theory that neutrinos do not have mass. Kajita is the 24th Nobel Prize winner born in Japan. And...

On galaxies and bosons, stars and quarks. In physics, truth does not always equal beauty. The Milky Way: An Insider’s Guide By William H. Waller (Princeton University Press, 296 pages, $29.95) A Palette of Particles By Jeremy Bernstein (Belknap Press of Harvard University, 224 pages, $18.95) THE BRITISH PHILOSOPHER J.L. Austin coined the handy phrase “medium-sized dry goods” to describe the world of everyday phenomena that the human nervous system is best suited to cope with, phenomena ranging in size from a grain of dust to a landscape. Within that range our senses and cognition are at home. All our...

Enlarge Image Plainly. An event display shows a Higgs candidate decaying to four electrons in the ATLAS detector. New measurements confirm that the Higgs is a Higgs. Credit: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN Eight months ago, physicists working with the world's biggest atom smasher—Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—created a sensation when they reported that they had discovered a particle that appeared to be the long-sought Higgs boson, the last missing piece in their standard model of particles and forces. Today, those researchers reported that the particle does indeed have the basic predicted properties of the standard model Higgs boson, clinching the identification....

No hints of “new physics” beyond the predictions of the Standard Model have turned up in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile circular tunnel at CERN Laboratory in Switzerland that slams protons together at high energies. (Photo: CERN) As a young theorist in Moscow in 1982, Mikhail Shifman became enthralled with an elegant new theory called supersymmetry that attempted to incorporate the known elementary particles into a more complete inventory of the universe.“My papers from that time really radiate enthusiasm,” said Shifman, now a 63-year-old professor at the University of Minnesota. Over the decades, he and thousands of...

Enlarge Image Twin peaks. Both the CMS (top) and the ATLAS (bottom) detectors see evidence of the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of photons in the form of a peak in a so-called mass plot. The agreement of the two peaks and other data clinch the discovery of the Higgs. Credit: CMS and ATLAS collaborations MEYRIN, SWITZERLAND—The long wait is over. Today, physicists working with the world's largest atom smasher here at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, reported that they have discovered the long-sought Higgs boson—the last missing bit in their standard model of fundamental particles and...

Sophisticated measurements from experiments indicate the radius is 4% smaller than thought. If true, the finding could have major ramifications for the standard model used in modern physics. Physicists might have to rethink what they know about, well, everything. European researchers dropped a potential bombshell on their colleagues around the world Wednesday by reporting that sophisticated new measurements indicate the radius of the proton is 4% smaller than previously believed. In a world where measurements out to a dozen or more decimal places are routine, a 4% difference in this subatomic particle — found in every atom's nucleus — is...

"Recent results from the Dzero experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator suggest that those looking for a single Higgs boson particle should be looking for five particles, and the data gathered may point to new laws beyond the Standard Model. 'The DZero results showed much more significant "asymmetry" of matter and anti-matter — beyond what could be explained by the Standard Model. Bogdan Dobrescu, Adam Martin and Patrick J Fox from Fermilab say this large asymmetry effect can be accounted for by the existence of multiple Higgs bosons. They say the data point to five Higgs bosons with similar masses...