https://theconversation.com/evidence-of-brand-new-physics-at-cern-why-were-cautiously-optimistic-about-our-new-findings-157464
In: Physics
**Background / The basics:** Scientists in Cern use a large machine called a particle collider because this is all it does: collide very small (smaller than an atom) particles or parts of atoms together in a continuous beam. Having recorded trillions of these collisions the scientists and their computers have learned a great deal about how these particles usually behave when they collide, so they have made many predictions and combined all their knowledge into a big unified theory they call The Standard Model. (SM) The SM is not perfect because it cant explain everything we observe in the universe or even in the big collider, so more work is needed and the scientists comes up with new ideas to explain what is really happening. When these ideas are tested, sometimes they see a result that surprises them. And at Cern surprises like these can be good because they indicate new things in nature we dont know about yet.
**This experiment specifically:** I this case , the Standard Model predicted a certain result, but they saw something else. Imagine you are shooting two new strawberries at each other over and over and you photograph the collision with lots of fast photos. Each time you expect to see the same certain things: lots of strawberry juice droplets, some small some bigger, you expect seeds and so on , but now you see something new: you see some of these small seeds suddenly behaving like they are super heavy and big and going really far. The question the scientists are asking is why are they behaving like this? Why are they going so far? is it a new force of nature acting on them or is it something else?
To answer this, more tests are needed.
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