Scientists' theories thrown into confusion

Particles of the Standard Model of particle physics (Image: Daniel Dominguez/CERN)

 Here's how the Associated Press described some breaking scientific news today:

The grand explanation physicists use to describe how the universe works may have some major new flaws to patch after a fundamental particle was found to have more mass than scientists thought.

“It’s not just something is wrong,” said Dave Toback, a particle physicist at Texas A&M University and a spokesperson for the U.S. government’s Fermi National Accelerator Lab, which conducted the experiments. If replicated by other labs, “it literally means something fundamental in our understanding of nature is wrong.”

That fragility of science's understanding of the "really beautiful and weird” components and forces of what exists and how these unite to sustain our life was stressed in a BBC article on the same news arising from the publication of a research paper published in the journal Science:

Dr Mitesh Patel of Imperial College, who works at the  Large Hadron Collider, believes that if the Fermilab result is confirmed, it could be the first of many new results that could herald the biggest shift in our understanding of the Universe since Einstein's theories of relativity more than a hundred years ago.

"The hope is that these cracks will turn into chasms and eventually we will see some spectacular signature that not only confirms that the Standard Model has broken down as a description of nature, but also give us a new direction to help us understand what we are seeing and what the new physics theory looks like.

"If this holds, there have to be new particles and new forces to explain how to make these data consistent".

The BBC report continues:

All eyes are now on the Large Hadron Collider which is due to restart its experiments after a three-year upgrade. The hope is that these will provide the results which will lay the foundations for a new more complete theory of physics.

"Most scientists will be a little bit cautious," says Dr Patel.

"We've been here before and been disappointed, but we are all secretly hoping that this is really it, and that in our lifetime we might see the kind of transformation that we have read about in history books." 

The AP provides insight into the shock waves sent through all those digging into the mysteries of quantum mechanics:

The result is so extraordinary it must be confirmed by another experiment, scientists say. If confirmed, it would present one of the biggest problems yet with scientists’ detailed rulebook for the cosmos, called the Standard Model. [Go to this site for an interesting read]

Duke University physicist Ashutosh V. Kotwal, the project leader for analysis, said it’s like discovering there’s a hidden room in your house.

Scientists speculated that there may be an undiscovered particle that is interacting with the W boson that could explain the difference. Maybe dark matter, another poorly understood component of the universe, could be playing a role. Or maybe there’s just new physics involved that they just don’t understand at the moment, researchers said.

 The finding is important because of its potential effect on the Standard Model of physics.

“Nature has facts,” Duke’s Kotwal said. “The model is the way we understand those facts.”

Scientists have long known the Standard Model isn’t perfect. It doesn’t explain dark matter or gravity well. If scientists have to go in and tinker with it to explain these findings they have to make sure it doesn’t throw out of whack mathematical equations that now explain and predict other particles and forces well, researchers said.

It is a recurring problem with the model. A year ago a different team found another problem with the Standard Model and how muons react.

“Quantum mechanics is really beautiful and weird,” Toback said. “Anyone who has not been deeply troubled by quantum mechanics has not understood it.”

I like that thought - that the design of the universe, whether on the scale of innumerable galaxies or on the scale of subatomic particles - is "beautiful" and awe-inspiring ("troubling"?). It gives science as a whole a fresh purpose, that of serving humanity by revealing the wonder of what has been provided for us out of love.

💢 See also Machine finds tantalising hints of new physics 

                    New force of nature

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