Mystery of the misbehaving Muon: Scientists hail breakthrough finding that flies in face of Standard Model - Times Now

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Key Highlights

• Scientists with Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, via a seminar held on Wednesday, declared the first results of the Muon g-2 experiment – one which, since 2018, has been measuring a particle called the muon, a heavier and unstable version of the electron first discovered in the 1930s

• The Standard Model – humanity's best explanation for how all particles in the universe behave predicts the frequency of a muon's wobble with great precision

• By the rigid standards of physics, the result can only be deemed a 'discovery' until it achieves a statistical certainty of five sigmas

In a breakthrough experiment, physicists have found new evidence that a subatomic particle is deviating from behaviour borne out by one of science's most trusted and reliable theories – the Standard Model of particle physics. The discrepancy discovered between what the model predicts and the particle's freshly measured behaviour suggests that the universe may contain previously undiscovered particles or forced that go beyond our current understanding. 

Scientists with Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, via a seminar held on Wednesday, declared the first results of the Muon g-2 experiment – one which, since 2018, has been measuring a particle called the muon, a heavier and unstable version of the electron first discovered in the 1930s. Similar to electrons, muons have a negative electric charge and a quantum property known as spin which, when placed in a magnetic field, cause muons to behave like wobbling tops. The speed at which the muon wobbles is directly proportional to the strength of the magnetic field applied. 

The Standard Model – humanity's best explanation for how all particles in the universe behave predicts the frequency of a muon's wobble with great precision. However, researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York back in 2001 discovered that the muon's wobble was slightly faster than what the Standard Model predicts. After two decades, the Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment, having conducted its own experiment, has now appeared to validate the findings of the Brookhaven experiment. 

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What's more, scientists noted that the probability of the discrepancy simply being a fluke was only about 1 in 40,000 – a clear-cut indication that unknown particles or forces may be affecting the muon's behaviour. Since physicists perform detailed, lengthy and highly rigorous calculations of all the contributions of elementary particles to the wobble, or magnetic moment, of another, if experimental results differ from the predicted value of g-2, they may conclude that other mysterious particles could be lurking in the vacuum. 

However, celebrations may still be a little premature though. By the rigid standards of physics, the result can only be deemed a 'discovery' until it achieves a statistical certainty of five sigmas (five standard deviations) or, in other words, a 1 in 3.5 million chance that a random fluctuation was responsible for the discrepancy between the predicted figure and observed one, rather than a real difference.

The latest results, to be published in the scientific journals, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review A&B, Physical Review A, and Physical Review D – are based on only 6 per cent of the total data the experiment intends to collect. As such, if the researchers' results remain consistent, it may take another couple of years to achieve the five sigma threshold. 

The Standard Model has stood the test of time since the 1970s but physicists know that it is incomplete. Fermilab's results are, for all intents and purposes, the biggest hint in decades that physical particles or forces exist beyond those described in the Standard Model. 

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2021-04-09 11:49:06Z
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