7 ms·
Have scientists discovered a fifth force of nature?
- nabla9 7y agoEvidence of a ‘Fifth Force’ Faces Scrutiny (2016) https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces-scrutiny-20160607/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces-scrutin... TL;DR: authors have a long history of discovering new particles at various masses, but these discoveries disappear on later studies with no explanation.
- tomrod 7y agoIf the lab has made every attempt to be honest, this may suggest they need to calibrate their equipment.
- ISL 7y agoThe credible measurements of new physics that are later ruled out are generally made at the edge of what is technically possible. Limiting and estimating all sources of systematic uncertainty is our job, but it is a difficult one. It is generally possible to make uncertainty estimates that are so conservative as to be beyond reproach, but to do so also makes progress almost impossible. I haven't yet had a chance to dig into this particular anomaly at 17 MeV, so what follows is speculation: It is a surprising mass range for anything new to emerge. The coupling constant, or its mechanism, must be so weak that it would avoid discovery in a century of other nuclear-physics and particle-physics experiments that have access to that energy scale. I am surprised that there hasn't yet been a devastating constraint on this thing from the electron-positron collider world.
- tomrod 7y agoI don't disagree at all! Tripping over rare findings are, in of themselves, rare events -- so much so that healthy skepticism is definitely warranted.
- vpribish 7y agoyeah, right - the telegraph is going to break this news to world.
- gzimhelshani 7y ago> If physicists are able to achieve the same result in the laboratory again, they can then work on understanding how that force operates and develop ways of harnessing its power. Why don't they try to achieve the same result first, and then publish this article in the first place.
- lokimedes 7y agoCan someone point to the article in PRL, I couldn’t get more than moonshine from the linked news article.
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/j6dIG http://archive.is/j6dIG
- crazygringo 7y agoOnly article I can find that actually seems to have information: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dark-matter-particle-hungary-atomki-nuclear-research-force-nature-a9210741.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dark-matter-parti... With link to not-yet-peer-reviewed paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459 https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/YfVzW http://archive.is/YfVzW
- knzhou 7y agoDuplicate of this post. [0] I have the same comment as over there: > It's important to keep in mind that there are always plenty of outstanding experimental anomalies in physics. At the moment, this is one of ~40 roughly equally credible hints towards new physics, and it's more likely than not that all of those hints will fade away over time. That isn't anybody's fault either: it has always been like this, and it happens because experiments are difficult and subtle. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084
- quickben 7y agoWhere can I read more about these hints?
- knzhou 7y agoYou can go straight to review articles, which are generally available for free on the arXiv. Or if you want the firehose, you can scan for papers whose abstracts contain words like 'hint', 'anomaly', 'excess', 'discrepancy', and so on [0]. 0: https://arxiv.org/search/advanced?advanced=&terms-0-operator=AND&terms-0-term=anomaly+OR+excess+OR+hint+OR+discrepancy&terms-0-field=all&classification-physics=y&classification-physics_archives=all&classification-include_cross_list=include&date-filter_by=all_dates&date-year=&date-from_date=&date-to_date=&date-date_type=submitted_date&abstracts=show&size=50&order=-announced_date_first https://arxiv.org/search/advanced?advanced=&terms-0-operator...
- mellosouls 7y agoI've provided a link to a blog that goes in depth on the previous results in another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617254
- CabbageRice 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology)
- k__ 7y ago
- ryeights 7y ago"No." --Law of Headlines
- choeger 7y agoCame here to find that.
- garmaine 7y agoExcept in this case the answer is indeed "yes."
- tomrod 7y agoIt even has a name! Betteridge's law of headlines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- Yajirobe 7y agoYes - the Higgs interaction. That's the fifth fundamental force, carried out by the Higgs boson.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoThat's gravity...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lalaland1125 7y agoSomeone should write an article: "When a headline is a question, is the answer no?"
- JackFr 7y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli... Any headline that ends in a question mark can confidently be answered no.
- deepnet 7y agoMods please change the linked telegraph article it is awful. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dark-matter-particle-hungary-atomki-nuclear-research-force-nature-a9210741.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dark-matter-parti... is better or the Arxiv https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459 https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459
- paulpauper 7y ago>The discovery is seen as taking us one step closer to the Holy Grail of physics: "unified field theory". This is a single theoretical framework which succinctly explains all the forces of nature. how would this help. if anything it would make it harder, especially if there other forces, by calling into doubt preexisting assumptions about how physics works
- krastanov 7y agoIt is "easier" to explain things when there is only one of them or many of them, but not in between. For instance, once we found there are many tens of elements, it was easier to group them in a periodic table, leading us to the discovery of just two (three) elementary particles that explain all elements. Once we found there are many tens of elementary particles, we were able to classify them in tables that made it obvious we need only a handful of leptons and boson to explain them all. The vague hope is that finding a new force will make it obvious what is common between all of them, leading to finding the simpler underlying object that explains them all.
- jwq 7y agoIf we were trying to figure out the logic behind a series of numbers and only were given the first four, and had no luck, wouldn’t we want to know the fifth?
- paulpauper 7y agoyes except that fundamental forces are not at all like numerical sequences generated by a function. gravity and electromagnetism couldn't be more dissimilar.
- jwq 7y agoIf such a grand unified theory exists (analogously, if there is a “logical” function that generates the sequence rather than (pseudo)-random numbers) then gravity and electromagnetism couldn’t be more similar, right?
- 7y ago
- icodestuff 7y agoThis article makes the same mistake as the CNN one. It’s “protophobic, meaning ‘interacts with neutrons instead of protons’", not ‘"photophobic, meaning ‘afraid of light’".
- mileycyrusXOXO 7y agoThank you, that makes much more sense.
- mellosouls 7y agoUntil it's replicated authoritatively, no they haven't. An in depth discussion from last time at The Reference Frame (guest blogger for those who don't like Lubos himself): https://motls.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-delirium-over-beryllium.html?m=1 https://motls.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-delirium-over-berylli...
- polynomial 7y agoHonestly, this makes the news media's handling of the BICEP2 announcement look like hard hitting investigative journalism.
- caconym_ 7y agoI don't know, have they?
- mmaunder 7y agoWhat is more likely: the discovery of a 5th force, or a lab error? But hey, by all means make lemonade.