https://theconversation.com/evidence-of-brand-new-physics-at-cern-why-were-cautiously-optimistic-about-our-new-findings-157464
In: Physics
Physicists have put together over the years the “Standard Model” which describes all of the sub-atomic particles and how they combine/decay into other particles (and how often). A recent paper from CERN describes how they *might* have evidence of an error in what the Standard Model predicts vs. experimental results.
This is important, because there is a pretty strong belief that the SM is incomplete and overly complicated, and that there’s a better model out there if we could figure it out. Finding specific flaws in the existing model is one of the best ways to come up with a better model (and know that it is likely more correct).
Additionally, we now believe that there are 4 “fundamental” forces in nature. It is a *possibility* that this experimental data is evidence of a new, unknown force that isn’t in the SM.
But the key word is *might*. The existing experimental evidence could just be a fluke. It’s kind of like flipping a coin, since it is based on probability.
We know that when we flip a fair coin, 50% of the time it should come up heads and 50% of the time tails. But when you run experiments, you don’t get exactly 50/50 every time. You need a lot of coin flips to get close enough to 50/50 to be statistically certain that you have a fair coin. There’s always a possibility that you get way too many heads or tails just as a function of chance.
The CERN data is pretty strong, but not yet strong enough. They need a lot more certainty before being able to say for sure that the Standard Model is broken in that particular manner. And it would be helpful if it was also replicated elsewhere, to reduce the odds of experimental error. These experiments are very difficult to run.
Latest Answers