2-9
Remarkable discovery
Last Post March 2021
Physicists at CERN find a clue that could turn our understanding
of reality
upside down.
A brand new particle, a still unknown force of nature ... physicists
at research
institute CERN see hints of something that could turn our understanding
of reality upside down.
‘This result may mean that nature has an as yet unknown,
fifth fundamental
force of nature’.
The already known four fundamental forces of nature are:
the electromagnetic force,
the weak nuclear force,
the strong nuclear force,
the force of gravity.
I quote part of a 2015 report in Scientias.nl :
The Hungarian research group that previously provided the impetus
for
the Americans’ suspicion of a fifth force of nature publishes
another paper,
endorsing the existence of the particle observed in 2015 - and
thus the alleged
fifth force of nature. Could it really be...?
Back
to 2015
To understand exactly what the Hungarians saw and why some physicists
get so excited about it, we have to go back to 2015. The year
the Hungarians
first reported the discovery of a particle that, on closer inspection,
could
well be the carrier of a fifth force of nature. “The Hungarian
scientists have
carried out a small experiment, in which they make ‘impacted’
beryllium
nuclei by shooting protons at a lithium nucleus,” explains
Niels Tuning,
a physicist at the National Institute for Subatomic Physics in
the Netherlands
(Nikhef). “After a short time, the impacted beryllium nucleus
falls
back to the ground state and emits a photon (light particle).
Such a photon
can split into an e- (electron) and an e+ (positron). The Hungarians
have
analysed these e+e pairs and there appear to be more e+e pairs
with a large
opening angle than expected. This may indicate the creation of
a particle,
which after decay also creates e+e pairs with a large opening
angle. This
is how we normally discover new particles: as a ‘peak’
in a distribution
(normally this is the distribution of the so-called ‘invariant
mass’ of a pair
of particles, but in this paper they look at the distribution
of the opening
angle, which is strongly related to it).”
As mentioned,
the Hungarians’ paper, initially overshadowed by other
news, lay in a cupboard gathering dust, until American researchers
reinterpreted
the results a year later. “They came to the conclusion that
the
(new particle the Hungarians had seen, ed.) could be a spin-1
particle.
Photons, W + Z particles and gluons are also spin-1 particles,
and are the
particles responsible for the electromagnetic force, the weak
nuclear force
and the strong nuclear force respectively. Spin-1 particles are
typically the
particles that are exchanged and thus responsible for a fundamental
force
of nature.” And in the case of the particle that the Hungarians
had seen,
it could therefore just be a carrier of a ‘new’ fundamental
force of nature,
according to the Americans.
While
the Americans were fiddling with the Hungarians’ results,
the Hungarians
themselves were not sitting still. Last month, they came up with
a
new paper that seems to verify the results from their first one.
“In the first
paper, they measured on 8Be (beryllium) nuclei and saw a ‘peak’
corresponding
to a particle with a mass of 17 MeV, about 33 times heavier than
an
electron, but still very light compared to other particles we
know,” Tuning
says. “In the new paper, they measured on a different nucleus,
namely 4He
(helium) and again measure a ‘peak’ at 17 MeV. So this
corresponds well
and is quite remarkable. Because the energy of the e+ and e- are
slightly
different, this corresponds to a slightly different opening angle
(115 degrees
instead of 140 degrees).
World-shattering
Whereas the Hungarians could count on little media attention in
2015,
their new paper is definitely in the spotlight. After all, could
they really
be on to something fundamentally new? If follow-up experiments
show
that the Hungarians are right, it will be world news.”It
would be earthshattering
if there were more forces than the electromagnetic force, the
weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force and gravity,”
Tuning states.
“It would undoubtedly win a Nobel Prize and take many studies
in a new
direction, both in accelerator particle physics and astroparticle
physics, as
well as cosmology.” For example, the discovery of a fifth
force of nature
could have huge implications for fathoming one of the greatest
mysteries
in astronomy: dark matter. “Explaining dark matter requires
particles that
have mass (and therefore generate extra gravity), but they must
not interact
too much with ordinary particles to explain existing observations.
This new
X17 particle might be able to do that.”
(Courtesy of Scientias.nl)
Postscript:
Here again we clearly see how mainstream science is shielding
itself
from everything because it is afraid that many things will change
if such
far-reaching discoveries are made. There was a lot of scepticism
and even
disbelief and “the chances are small that it is true”.
Now that CERN has
made a similar measurement, a difficult situation has arisen.
For what now,
ladies and gentlemen scientists? It has always been so that what
one does
not know, one cannot see nor find! And yet science continues to
protect
these old-fashioned views.
