On March 24, the LHCb discovered phenomena that defy the Standard Model. As a result, less than two weeks later, another cloud made of rain came over the physics. However, physicists, who have been conditioned by quantum mechanics for years, are enjoying the current sense of unease that Schrödinger’s storm will come and never come.
Forty years after the introduction of the Standard Model, the apparently anomalous behavior of elementary particles has caused a crack to appear in the firmament of physics, giving physicists a chance to glimpse the reality beyond the realities of the heavens. Now, the latest measurements have torn the rift even wider.
Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago recently announced that muons – elementary particles similar to electrons – wobble more than expected as they spin around a magnetization ring.
The widely anticipated latest measurements, which support observations made decades ago, quickly made headlines around the world. muons’ anomalous magnetic moment greatly exceeds theoretical predictions, a result that an international team of 132 theoretical physicists painstakingly extrapolated last year.
Researchers at Fermilab estimate that the current result has a confidence level of “4.2 sigma,” close to the strict 5 sigma required to claim a big discovery.
On the face of it, the suspected presence of an unknown particle gives the muon an extra boost. Such a discovery would finally herald the collapse of the 50-year-old Standard Model of particle physics …….
“Today is an extraordinary day, long awaited not only by us, but by the entire international physics community.” Graziano Venanzoni, one of the leaders of the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab and a physicist at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy, told the press.
On the other hand, while physicists were having a champagne party, a recent paper in Nature poured cold water on the head.
The team of theoretical physicists known as BMW applied the most uncertain terms calculated by state-of-the-art supercomputers and found that it may not be the Standard Model that is the problem, but our calculations. According to their calculations, the theoretical predictions agree with the measured values.
If Nature is correct, then physicists may have spent more than 20 years chasing dream bubbles. But the classical calculations, which have been tested for decades, are probably not a problem.
“This is a very sensitive and interesting time.” says BMW member Zoltan Fodor, a theoretical particle physicist at Penn State University.
We’ll see if the Standard Model stays put, or if “the 22nd century, once again, becomes the century of physics.
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