this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

How do we even know there is another fundamental force?

[–] chrisphero 8 points 1 year ago

We don’t know for sure, it is one of the possibilities why prediction and result don’t line up.

“If the measurements don’t line up with the prediction [calculated with the standard model], that could be a sign that there is some unknown particle appearing in the loops—which could, for example, be the carrier of a fifth force,” particle physicist Jon Butterworth told The Guardian.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The article overstates the case. I posted it because it's interesting, but the headline is hyperbole. It is the usual situation where an anomalous observation could lead to an important new discovery and a revolution in theory, but it may turn out to be an issue with the experimental setup, a confounding factor that no one has thought of, or some new phenomenon that can after all be accommodated without major theoretical upheavals.

Here's another source that reports that a Russian experiment has obtained results that fit with the Standard Model, so the discrepancy could be caused by any of these other factors, not by a deficiency in the Standard Model itself:

Dreams of new physics fade with latest muon magnetism result

(archive link)

So it's far too early to be saying we're on the brink of a scientific revolution due to these anomalous results. All we know is that the anomaly seems intermittent and is so far unexplained.

[–] yokonzo 4 points 1 year ago

It’s in the article, the standard model is proving to be incomplete, not covering new phenomena, it works for other things but there’s something missing