Is the universe expanding faster than thought? Slower? None of the above? What are the real ramifications?
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It is complicated, but basically it means the theories that they have for fundamental particles doesn’t really work. It is like if in maths you find out that 1 + 1 = 2.01 you need to fundamentally re-examine how you do maths.
*For now* it doesn’t mean anything particularly huge.
The Standard Model (the basic, but incomplete model of particle physics) predicts that the W boson has a particular mass, given by other universal constants. This new paper looked at experimental data from 2011 and found the W boson’s mass to be slightly higher than this predicted value (by less than 0.01%).
Most of the time in these situations, where a measured value of something doesn’t fit the established theory, follow-up research finds a problem with the experiment, or finds that something went wrong somewhere. This is why some of the scientists involved are being cautious, and asking for follow-up research, for other people to do similar experiments and see what measurements *they* get for the mass of the W boson (or to review the paper and see if there are any flaws).
But sometimes it turns out that the experiment is correct and the model is wrong. And that is when people get excited as it means they need a new model. In the case of the Standard Model, which has been the basic way of looking at particle physics for the last ~40+ years, we already know that the Standard Model isn’t perfect, so finding new flaws in it, or explicit breaks, might help find out where it is wrong and how to fill in the gaps.
To put it another way, this paper is less of a “wow, this fundamentally changes what we know about the universe” situation, and more of a “hmm, that’s interesting, we should look into that…” one. Although by particle physics standards that is still pretty exciting.
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