> If the discrepancy was real, meaning protons really shrink in the presence of muons, this would imply unknown physical interactions between protons and muons

> If the discrepancy was real, meaning protons really shrink in the presence of muons, this would imply unknown physical interactions between protons and muons — a fundamental discovery. Hundreds of papers speculating about the possibility have been written in the near-decade since. This reminds me of a joke. An experimental physicist walks into a theoretical physicist's office with a really cool experimental result, shows the printed out graph to the theoretician. He thinks for a while and says, "this is perfectly in line with theory, let me explain how". The experimentalist looks at the graph, scratches his head, says "uh, this is upside down", and rotates the paper 180 degrees. The theoretician thinks a while more and says, "well this can also be explained".