CERN experiment hints at new force of nature.

Interesting news coming out of CERN.

Experiments have shown there maybe a yet undiscovered " New Force Of Nature "

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva have spotted an unusual signal in their data that may be the first hint of a new kind of physics.

The standard model does not describe everything. It does not explain the fourth force, gravity, and perhaps more strikingly, says nothing about the 95% of the universe that physicists believe is not constructed from normal matter.

www.theguardian.com...

www.bbc.com...

Experiments will be on going, but early signs show there maybe something yet undiscovered that will lead to a greater understanding how the universe was created. Looks like exciting discoveries may not be that far away.

a reply to: alldaylong
What would this imply, can we use these leptons to get extra electrons? If I understood correct, they found some extra electrons that they could not account for. So they think leptons have something to do with decaying processes (?) and while this happens the leptons leave some electrons over.

If electrons are what powers stuff when they move through conductors, could we not suck up these extra electrons by letting leptons do their natural thing? Like accumulate leptons and then do this decay thing, get extra electrons, suck them up with the help of a lower powered energy source and build up a bigger charge?

Just humble hopes.


These are the descriptions on measurement methods and parameters used. I hoped I could find more readable descriptions what this natural force could be used for. I didn't find any and the physics are too high for me but here is what I found:

In this two-part seminar, we will present new results on two key processes using the complete dataset collected by the LHCb experiment so far.

Link to papers from CERN about measurement methods and results

a reply to: alldaylong

Well, it's got beauty!

a reply to: ThatDamnDuckAgain

I don't think at this stage that we could assume overunity.

The energies required to run the LHC would far outweigh a three-sigma abundance of electrons over muons.

It does, however, open up some interesting possibilities for how this leptoquark might interface into some future theoretical frameworks. My guess is that it might clarify the breaking of supersymmetry.

originally posted by: ThatDamnDuckAgain
a reply to: alldaylong
What would this imply, can we use these leptons to get extra electrons?

No, these "extra" electrons are generated from a decay only observed in high energy particle accelerators (not a natural process per se since in the real world those particles have already decayed into their steady/stable state), so currently it takes a couple of megawatts of power just to create a few "extra" (not really extra since they have 2 decay states) electrons that could barely power a single transistor. Thats a powerloss factor of 1000000000000000000/1 (i did not do the calculation but if one would, it would be even more zeros), so you can't gain anything from this process

originally posted by: alldaylong
Experiments will be on going, but early signs show there maybe something yet undiscovered that will lead to a greater understanding how the universe was created. Looks like exciting discoveries may not be that far away.

I don't know if I'd call them "early signs" anymore, this has been going on a while.

There's a youtube video explaining this and the presenter, Dr Harry Cliff makes one of the best scientific presentations I've ever seen. He demonstrates an amazing ability to take a complex subject that only a few people understand, and explain it very articulately in a simpler way that most of us can understand.

Beyond the Higgs: What's Next for the LHC? - with Harry Cliff


It's from over 3 years ago and he says they've been working on figuring out if the effect is real or just a statistical anomaly, but they will hopefully figure it out soon, so I would have hoped they would have figured it out by now...apparently they haven't. The article linked in the OP mentioned 3.1 sigma which is still way short of the 5 sigma needed to prove a real effect.

To put this in perspective, I hear this story over and over again about "unexplained data" possibly hinting at "new physics", and I can't say that characterization has been completely wrong when it was announced, but, eventually in those cases, ways were found to explain the data without invoking new physics.

One example was the discovery of faster than light neutrinos which required new physics, there was a flurry of papers about that, but it turned out to not be good data.

Another example was the "Pioneer Anomaly" which had a very tiny, unexplained acceleration. Again there were people already writing papers about the new physics that could account for the observations. In that case it turned out that the data were good, but resulted from thermal effects that were difficult to calculate and it took a very complicated analysis to determine spacecraft behavior could be explained by thermal effects using known physics.

I can't predict how this LHCb experiment will ultimately turn out, but it could go either way, meaning it might turn out to be nothing but a statistical anomaly that has no meaning, or, it might turn out to be what they hope, an observation that requires new physics to explain it.

The LHC has ways to reduce their data set but they generate an almost incomprehensible amount of data, and if you take that much data and look for statistical anomalies, you're going to find statistical anomalies, it's just a fact and this is why the LHC physicists have the 5 sigma requirement to confirm a discovery, and if they are still only at 3.1 sigma, they still have a long way to go to get to 5 sigma.

This would not be the only 3 sigma event in the history of the LHC that turned out to be nothing but a statistical fluke, but, everybody hopes it turns out to be something exciting.

Hi all, do not reply to much, but enjoy reading views.
This has recently been in the news, and has a 4 simga rating now, not sure what has changed, but looks like this may not just be a glitch.
The BBC has writen an article about this, I attach what they said.
www.bbc.co.uk...

Exciting... we are learning a lot of things this age

a reply to: flice

Will this have any practical applications to the world at large or will it only prove relevant to cosmology?

I wonder what the outcome of this will be. Prof Brian Cox is one of the most easy to listen to people, he has commented on the information,but a early morning TV show has raised some unexpected comments of his. I hope that this is because of his forthcoming series.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

originally posted by: dowot
I wonder what the outcome of this will be. Prof Brian Cox is one of the most easy to listen to people, he has commented on the information,

Do you mean Brian Cox commented on the topic of this thread? I missed that, what were his comments on this topic?

but a early morning TV show has raised some unexpected comments of his. I hope that this is because of his forthcoming series.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Maybe unexpected to the host of the show he was on, but the idea he mentions referenced in that link been discussed for decades. It's called the holographic principle. One scientist claimed to run an experiment to test it, but the experiment was highly criticized by other physicists before it was performed, because the other physicists said it wasn't a valid experiment and wouldn't really test anything.

There's a bit of a battle going on in physics where some physicists seem to get a little too carried away with untestable ideas, and the holographic principle is apparently one such idea, about which physicist Sabine Hossenfelder says we’ll not be able to test this hypothesis in the coming centuries. Therefore writing papers about it is a waste of time..

So if she's right, and I suspect she is, it's just not a very productive thing to spend much time on until and if we can figure out a way to test it which Hossenfelder thinks will not happen in the coming centuries, so if that implies maybe we can devise a test 1000 years from now, then it might be worth discussing the test results 1000 years from now.

Discussing it before then seems like just entertainment and seems to be more or less devoid of any scientific proof of whether the idea is right or complete garbage.

Or to put it in the context of George Box who said: "All models are wrong. Some are useful." If we can't validate the model, it's not currently useful.

So, one might argue that time and effort could be more productively spent on things which are useful or potentially useful in the centuries to come, like for example, the subject of this thread, which is based in experiment, so whichever way the results turn out, the experiments should eventually give us an answer about whether it's a true anomaly or a statistical fluke, or something else.

a reply to: Arbitrageur
I always enjoy Prof B Cox's comments but was a bit worried about the idea that I was a hologram. I had to pinch myself!
No there was no connection, directly, to the OP. Sorry if I implied that there was.

a reply to: dowot
Why would you be worried about finding out that everything that appears is a hologram?

Wouldn't that make you the holodeck?