13 ms·
Newly Measured Particle Seems Heavy Enough to Break Known Physics
- a9h74j 5y ago> “The W boson has to be the same on both sides of the Atlantic.”
- GuB-42 5y agoThe European W boson is 143 yoctograms while the American W boson is 5 heptilionths of an ounce, a small but significant difference.
- eesmith 5y agoGiven the small size, I prefer to think of it as 2.2127 zeptograins. Troy grains, of course.
- D-Coder 5y agoAfrican or European?
- jasonhansel 5y agoThe only way to settle this question is to build the next particle accelerator on the US-Canada border.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mrfusion 5y agoCould this be what the Higgs or dark matter is?
- zarmin 5y agoDid we not sort out the Higgs field in 2012?
- DiabloD3 5y agoIt's one of those "yes, but no" situations. We now have a particle that is ~126 GeV, behaves like what the Higgs boson was predicted to be. However, if the Higgs field is exactly what we think it is, it seems to imply energy densities several magnitudes bigger than the currently observed vacuum energy density of the universe. This leads to either the cosmological constant is wrong and/or there was no Big Bang, or the Grand Unified Theory is missing another major component instead of merely missing the discovery of the Higgs boson and an accurate measurement of the Higgs field.
- gus_massa 5y agoI agree. More/alternative details: We discovered one Higgs boson that has a mass of ~126GeV, but no one is sure that it's the only one. There are plenty of alternative models that have more Higgs bosons yet to be discovered. More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Alternative_models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Alternative_models It's a very obscure paragraph so if you (GP) don't understand the details don't worry, me neither. But the important part is that there are many models and each one has a different number of Higgs bosons with different properties. Until other(s) Higgs bosons are discovered it's very difficult to know which model is correct. For example there is a recent preprint about another Higgs boson with ~95GeV https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30807022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30807022 (88 points | 12 days ago | 26 comments) The idea is that there are two weird results in CMS and Atlas that "show" something with ~95GeV, but they only have 3 sigmas. So it may be a fluke, but it's unusual enough to keep an eye in those experiments. In the post I linked they interpret this as a family of 3 Higgs bosons, the old ~126GeV, the new dubious ~95GeV one, and a third one yet to be discovered. (Just to be super clear, the ~95GeV and the proposed family are unconfirmed.)
- 323 5y agoWe discovered one Higgs boson. But there could be a few more. This is not settled yet.
- thestoicattack 5y agoA new analysis from Fermilab measures the W boson as 76 MeV heavier than the Standard Model predicts. The uncertainty in the measurement is 9 MeV.
- lol_what 5y agoless than 0.1% off the predicted value.
- whatshisface 5y agoIs 100 = 100.1 a hundred percent wrong or 0.1% wrong?
- sachinjoseph 5y agoWhile it would depend on the tolerance level of the particular situation, generally, 100 = 100,00 is way more wrong than 100 = 100.1
- adhesive_wombat 5y agoLanding a plane 0.1% short on its journey is not great, say.
- jquery 5y agoIt depends on what your goal was
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoLanding a plane is always great. Ask any pilot.
- throw0101a 5y agoAny landing that you can walk away from is a good landing. Any landing after which you can use the plane again is a great one. A landing that meets neither of the above two criteria, much less so. Remember: taking off is optional, but landing is mandatory.
- mandy12xx 5y agoSince the two experiments have already conflicting results, this likely will/should be replicated, before we can believe this result. As an example, this experiment on neutrinos traveling faster than light was later proved wrong. https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2011.554 https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2011.554.
- kitd 5y agoThe BBC article on this says there have been hints from other experiments that support these results, but they need deeper analysis: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60993523 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60993523 The result, published in the journal Science, could be related to hints from other experiments at Fermilab and the Large Hadron Collider at the Swiss-French border. These, as yet unconfirmed results, also suggest deviations from the Standard Model, possibly as a result of an as yet undiscovered fifth force of nature at play.
- T-A 5y agoFrom the same article: But the excitement in the physics community is tempered with a loud note of caution. Although the Fermilab result is the most accurate measurement of the mass of the W boson to date, it is at odds with two of the next most accurate measurements from two separate experiments which are in line with the Standard Model.
- londons_explore 5y agoSo... 2 experiments + theory Vs 1 'better' experiment. I know which side I'd bet on.
- andrewflnr 5y agoNo one, including the original scientists IIUC, needed to be convinced the FTL-neutrino result was wrong. It was just a matter of what went wrong.
- 5y ago
- MichaelRazum 5y agoFeels kind of 1920. War. Inflation and Physics offer's some interesting mysteries. Maybe AGI will solve it all for us;)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Victerius 5y agoI am equally eager and terrified to know if a new superweapon to surpass nuclear weapons could or will be invented in this century.
- sgt101 5y agoWe don't need to; nuclear weapons in the giga tonne range are practical. Anything over about 200 kilo tonnes just isn't that useful because cities aren't so big, and aren't circular.
- HughCannon 5y agoAn interesting thought: A superweapon more powerful than nuclear weapons might with a single use cause the end of life as we know it. As such, you would not test or demonstrate it, therefore the weapon might not be useful.
- blendergeek 5y agoOne could always test it on some other planet like the Death Star in _Star Wars_.
- colechristensen 5y agoNobody needs a bigger bomb though, it wouldn't be any more of a threat. We can already destroy a whole city with a single weapon or trigger a mass extinction event in somewhere between an hour and a day, being better than that isn't really any more scary. No, the "better" superweapon would be about precision and speed of destruction... like the ability to resolve the whole surface of the planet at sub cm resolution and pick out and destroy any target in moments... imagine a starlink-type constellation but spy satellites with space lasers instead backed by enormous AI facial-and-other recognition to identify where anybody or anything was. Or maybe something like being able to read thoughts at a distance or even influence them. A bigger bomb though is just about doing something we can already do slightly more quickly. We can also already build bigger bombs than we have but there's no strategic advantage.
- wintorez 5y agoSophon?
- adampk 5y agoNot sure if you were actually kidding, but honestly is it something to start considering as an answer to Fermi’s Paradox?
- wintorez 5y agoYou mean the dark forest? Of course it’s probable.
- WithinReason 5y agoIt was a literary device that made no sense in practice. Spoiler: How could extremely powerful civilisations spread massive star killing guns around in the universe every ~50 light years but not have the ability to detect intelligent life in each star system?
- Intermernet 5y agoIf they distributed those guns a few million years or so before the intelligent life existed...
- WithinReason 5y agoAnd they didn't distribute sensors?
- awinter-py 5y agocheck for cavorite in the soil
- ruined 5y agounlikely. we're too deep.
- derekdahmer 5y agoUsing cosmic rays to calibrate the detector is really cool! > Knowing the exact position of each wire is crucial to getting an accurate trajectory. For the new analysis, Kotwal and his colleagues took advantage of muons that rain down from the sky as cosmic rays. These bulletlike particles constantly rip through the detector in almost perfectly straight lines, letting the researchers detect any wonky wires and pin down the wires’ positions to within 1 micrometer.
- nathancahill 5y agoStraight out of The Three-Body Problem
- thunderbong 5y agoThat's sheer genius!
- oyoman 5y agoJust to let people knows: actually it is the common way to calibrate detectors and especially cylindrical detector system with a solenoid magnet. So nothing special in this.
- Intermernet 5y agoJust because it's common doesn't mean it's not special! (Actually, it sort-of by definition does mean that, but come on! It's still awesomely cool!)
- WithinReason 5y ago
- Melatonic 5y agoI always thought it seemed logical that POSSIBLY at the large, macro scale of galaxys and black holes and whatnot interacting there could be a force equivalent to the Strong Nuclear Force we see in Chemistry. Of course I have no evidence to support this - just seemed plausible. Maybe this is involved?
- vecter 5y agoWe don’t really work with the strong force in chemistry, mostly in nuclear and high energy physics. Chemistry is mostly about electron transfer and bonding.
- Melatonic 5y agoI guess I just learned about it in chemistry - did not really mean to imply it was specific to chemistry. Makes sense.
- LegitShady 5y agothe strong nuclear force doesn't really deal with chemistry all that much - you need to crack the nuclei of atoms to release it...like, ya know, nuclear tech. You're gonna have a tough time separating something's protons using a hot plate and some chemicals, and its not really chemistry.
- riwsky 5y agoAh, yes, the infamous Yo Momma boson
- dylan604 5y agoNot to be confused with the Psych Boson
- bigbillheck 5y agoI'm placing my money on 'theorists will re-do calculations and get a new result closer to experiment', like they did with the muon g-2.
- codethief 5y agoWhich experiment, though? There are now multiple experiments whose results contradict each other.
- 1970-01-01 5y ago>>The W boson has to be the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Yo boson so fat she broke physics. Thank you and good night.
- peter303 5y agoThe is a similar problem with the moment of the muon: theory and measurement differ greater than error limits of either. That hints that theory is missing some additional physics or particle interactions. The muon was the first particle discovered from the 2nd & 3rd tier of particles, since muons are readily generated by cosmic ray impacts. Only the first tier of particles is necessary for the physics of everyday life: atoms, chemistry, fission and fusion. The unnecessary muon strikes again.
- pdonis 5y ago> theory and measurement differ greater than error limits of either Here, though, it isn't just theory and measurement that differ. This new measurement differs from multiple previous measurements of the W boson mass, by an amount greater than the error limits of either. The Science article linked to downthread shows this.
- ranger207 5y ago> Nearly a decade after that last analysis, the collaboration has finally come up for air. In a November 2020 meeting over Zoom, Kotwal decrypted the team’s result (they had worked with encrypted data so that the numbers wouldn’t influence their analysis) with the press of a button. What does it mean that they worked with encrypted data?
- joe-collins 5y agoThey used homomorphic encryption to blind themselves. Utilized correctly, it would have no impact on the result, only on the team's knowledge of the substance of the data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
- IncRnd 5y agoThat's completely incorrect according to the actual study. [1] They used random data blinding until analysis procedures were established. The word encrypted was used informally (in the article) not as a reference to homomorphism. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781
- kraemahz 5y agoI've seen other instances where physicists working at CERN would blind themselves to the results of their computations while developing their algorithms, making sure the code was bug-free and physically accurate without running it "in production" as it were on the actual experimental results. This is to blind themselves to the actual statistics of the experiment so that "p-hacking" or manipulation of the results to fit a preconceived agenda is not a temptation.
- Mathnerd314 5y agohttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781 says "The MW fit values are blinded during analysis with an unknown additive offset in the range of −50 to 50 MeV". So they added a random number so they didn't game the analysis to be near the known value. It's nothing as complicated as homomorphic encryption.
- dskrvk 5y agoThis article explains the result better both from a conceptual and a technical perspective: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781
- japanuspus 5y agoSecond this, the article in Science is well worth a read: has an excellent overview of the issue and a clear technical discussion.