Did We Just Discovered A New Force Of Nature?
We all are aware of four fundamental force of nature,
- Gravitational Force.
- Electromagnetism.
- Strong Nuclear forced.
- Weak Nuclear Force.
These four forces are core forces that humans are aware of and based on these forces we understand the concept of how space works.
But, recently a study has been conducted which raises many questions and shakes the science to its core.
Muong g-minus-two experiment has been conducted in the Fermi National accelerator laboratory in Illinois which is also known as Fermilab. And it centers on muons, a particular type of elementary, subatomic particle. Muons are typically described as being similar to electrons but they are 200 times more massive.
They are a bit difficult to study because they decay so rapidly into electrons but up until recently, they were generally expected to follow the standard model of particle physics with its four forces of nature.
That is why they weren’t expected to do anything weird, or to behave differently. However, when a team of scientists beamed muons around a 50-foot diameter Fermilab accelerator which is shown above. They beamed muons at close to the speed of light they noticed something new.
They were moving faster than they were supposed to according to the four fundamental forces. Which led researchers to suggest there is an Unknown particle or Unknown force that we (humans) don’t know about.
In the past, it may have seemed like an outlandish science-fiction to propose a new force of nature. But now it doesn’t seem anymore. In this world, there is so much, perhaps that isn’t contained by only gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force. It’s not the first time that the idea of the fifth force is floating around.
In 2015, Attila Krasznahorkay of Hungary’s Institute for Nuclear Research did an experiment on X17 particles.
He and his team claimed to have discovered it whilst running an experiment aiming to detect dark matter. The X17 particle is said to be third-fourth times heavier than an electron and would therefore represent something of a midway point between an electron and a muon.
A major difference between the X17 and the irregularity detected by Fermilab is X17 hasn’t been detected again but on another hand, the Fermilab results were obtained twenty years back by Brookhaven and that’s the reason the Fermilab experiment is more accepted.
This is not the first time muons are in the news but previously multiple studies have been conducted on them which gave us shocking results. For years we had a relatively basic understanding of the subatomic realm, where protons, neutrons, and electrons rule.
But gradually, we are getting a detailed picture of what exactly is going on inside an atom. Even though these findings deal on a microscopic level, they could end up having a huge impact on our macro existences.
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