Researchers at three experimental facilities in Japan , the US , and Europe have find anomalies in the decline of a rare speck called a B meson that suggests that aperient does n’t appear to work the way we expect it to .
The anomalous radioactive decay violates the rationale of lepton universality . This is where electrons and their two massive cousin , the muons and tau molecule , behave in the same direction . The only difference is their masses and life-time . According to a study report inNature , however , there ’s something else travel on . The pace for some decay of the dense lepton tau , relative to the light lepton , were higher than foretelling .
Particle physics is described by one of the greatest theories ever produced , holler the Standard Model . While so far it has been successful in explicate and predicting phenomenon and subatomic particle ( like the Higgs boson ) , it is still modified . For example , it does n’t include solemnity . Particle physicist , therefore , have been look for violations of the Standard Model in the hope of finding new physics .
“ We saw the first significant observance of something beyond the Standard Model at the BaBaR experimentation conduct at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory , ” co - author Manuel Franco Sevilla pronounce in astatement .
The BaBaR results are in agreement with findings from the Belle experiment in Japan andrecent resultsfrom CERN . When the information from the three experiments are considered together , they bring a violation of the lepton universality to a 99.95 percentage sure thing . This is pretty good , but not enough to qualify as a find .
A find ask to hand a level of certainty of99.9999 percentto fade the stringent ( but justified ) scientific standards . That ’s with good reason as there have been illustration of false positives , like the infamousCERN bumpa few years ago . So while the results are promise , it ’s important not to calculate our chickens before they hatch .
More investigations of the B mesotron decays will be conduct to either affirm or confute what has been visualize so far . If they are confirmed , this would entail new , unexpected cathartic is out there . next experiments will look explore why the lepton universality does n’t work as we expected .
" We ’re not sure what confirmation of these results will think in the long term , " Franco Sevilla added . " First , we need to make certain that they ’re truthful and then we ’ll need appurtenant experimentation to determine the meaning . "
We will have to look and see , but the Standard Model might still have some tricks up its sleeves .
