If their conclusions are confirmed, a worldwide sensation will occur in science, perhaps more significant than the discovery of gravitational waves.
Today, four fundamental forces are known that act in our world: gravitational and electromagnetic forces at the macrolevel, strong and weak interactions are observed at the level of elementary particles. Physicists still have enough of these four forces to explain everything around. The only concern is that visible matter makes up no more than 5% of all matter in the Universe, while the rest is hidden from our senses. Scientists call this imperceptible part of the Universe - dark matter and dark energy.
It is believed that the only force that affects dark matter is gravity, but unconditional traces of this interaction have not yet been found. The absence of interaction with dark matter does not bother scientists, they continue to search for it and are potentially ready for discoveries, including the discovery of a new fundamental interaction.
Last year, physicist Attila Krasznahorkay and colleagues from the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Debrecen) published an article in the ArXiv.org preprint database in which they concluded that they had discovered the fifth interaction. In January, their paper was published in Physical Review Letters.
Both publications were not noticed by the scientific community, with the exception of a group of theoretical physicists led by Jonathan Feng from the University of California (Irvine, USA), who decided to check the results of their Hungarian colleagues. Feng and co-authors carefully studied the calculations of the Hungarian researchers and announced that this new force, it seems to them, does not violate any laws of nature. Feng posted an article on validation, also at ArXiv.org.
Hungarian scientists were looking for a "dark photon" - a particle of light from dark matter. They bombarded a lump of lithium-7 with protons, causing the protons to turn into an unstable nucleus of beryllium-8, which decays into a pair of electrons and positrons (analogs of electrons in antimatter). When protons hit the lithium at an angle of 140 degrees, significantly more pairs of electrons and positrons were emitted back than the Standard Model's calculations suggested.
The authors of the experiment decided that these extra particles could be a manifestation of a new particle - 34 times heavier than an electron. Perhaps this is a dark photon. Feng et al. Believe that the anomaly observed by Hungarian scientists shows not a dark photon, but a manifestation of the fifth interaction.
Now several scientific groups at once - from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in the USA, MIT, CERN - have undertaken to repeat the experiment and check the conclusions of Kraznakhorkay and Feng.
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"Has a Hungarian physics laboratory discovered the fifth force of nature?" - with such a tempting headline, material appeared on Thursday in an authoritative scientific journal Nature ... This is a discovery that may have been made by Hungarian physicists from the Hungarian Institute for Nuclear Research. Currently, science knows four fundamental interactions, which are believed to be able to describe all known processes in the Universe.
These include gravity, which all material bodies exhibit in relation to each other, and three interactions described by the so-called Standard Model: electromagnetic, weak and strong.
However, the Standard Model is phenomenological, that is, not based on any deep theory that underlies it, and therefore does not prohibit the discovery of new particles or new interactions with the growth of scientific knowledge. Therefore, in the programs of most large experiments in the field of particle physics, scientists have long been searching for the fifth fundamental interaction - deviations from the predictions of the Standard Model.
In the last ten years, the search for a new interaction has resumed with renewed vigor due to the inability of the Standard Model to explain the phenomenon of dark matter - a mysterious substance that makes up more than 80% of the Universe. For the role of carriers of dark matter, theorists have proposed many exotic particles, for example, dark photons, by analogy with ordinary photons - carriers of electromagnetic interaction.
Hungarian scientists under the leadership of Attila Krasnahorkai in their experiments at the 5-megavolt van de Graaff accelerator were just looking for dark photons, but they found something completely different. During their experiments, they bombarded a target of lithium-7 with low-energy protons, as a result of which nuclei of beryllium-8 were formed. This nucleus is in an excited state and quickly passes into the ground state, emitting energy. Usually just a photon is emitted, but about every thousandth time this virtual gamma quantum inside the beryllium nucleus itself turns into an electron-positron pair.
Since the mass of a virtual photon is close to zero, the electron and positron, escaping from the nucleus, should fly in almost the same direction, that is, the angle between their trajectories in the laboratory frame of reference should be close to zero.
In this distribution, as physicists say, there is a "tail" - that is, the larger the scattering angle, the less likely it is to meet such a pair of particles. However, the theory says so. The experiment showed
that at an angle of expansion of 140 degrees, a local peak in probability is observed, which should not be.
The authors of the experiment interpreted this as a manifestation of new particles emitted by the beryllium nucleus, which then decay into an electron-positron pair. Calculations have shown that the mass of this particle should be 17 MeV. “We are confident in the results of our experiment,” says Krasnahorkai, adding that the experiment has shown these results for three years. In April 2015, the Hungarians posted their work in the archive electronic preprints , and already in April 2016, American theorists led by Jonathan Fan of the University of California at Irvine, in which they stated that the results of Hungarian physicists do not contradict past experiments and are a discovery
- neither more nor less - manifestations of the fifth fundamental interaction.
A few days later, the issue was raised at a working meeting at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States, the assumption of the discovery of the fifth force found both supporters and skeptics. They agreed on one thing - the hypothesis can and should be tested in future experiments.
According to Feng, who supported the idea of \u200b\u200ba fifth interaction, his group is testing other possible particles that could explain the anomaly. “But the protophobic boson is the most obvious explanation,” he said.
A specialist in the field of elementary particles, a leading employee of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, was skeptical about the discovery.
“The graph shows that deviations are observed only at two values \u200b\u200bof the energy of the incident protons, with other energy indicators this is not,” the physicist explained to Gazeta.Ru. - We slightly changed the energy of protons - and the "burst" disappeared. This usually happens when certain experimental difficulties arise. After all, beryllium is also beryllium in Africa, and it does not matter at what energy it is obtained. "
MTA Atomki
In addition, the lifetime of the proposed new particle, which has already been nicknamed the "protophobic X-boson", is estimated at 10 -14 seconds, which is quite a long time, and it is strange that in a large number of similar experiments it was not found.
"I am skeptical about this, but I support the idea that this should be looked at in the current large experiments, for example, at the LHCb at the Large Hadron Collider," said Rostovtsev, to whom the story of the discovery of Hungarian physicists and the theoretical justification for it reminded prescription. Then the physicists working on the Italian experiment OPERA announced the discovery of neutrinos flying at superluminal speed. “Then a sea of \u200b\u200btheoretical works immediately appeared, explaining with the help of additional dimensions, fifth forces, new particles and whatever — about a hundred theoretical articles! So what?
Then it turned out that nothing had happened, and some student had badly connected the cable, ”the physicist recalls.
It will be possible to test the hypothesis at the LHC and in two other experiments on bombarding a fixed target with positrons - at the Frascati National Laboratory near Rome and at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk.
MOSCOW, May 26 - RIA Novosti.Scientists from Hungary have found hints of the existence of physics outside of the Standard Model of the microcosm. They uncovered evidence of not four, but five fundamental forces of nature, according to the journal Nature News Service.
At the end of last year, Attila Krasznahorkay of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Debrecen and his colleagues published an article in which they talked about the unusual results of observations of what happens when the beryllium-8 atom transitions from an excited to a normal state when the synthesis of beryllium during the bombardment of a lithium sheet with protons.
According to scientists, under certain circumstances, this process leads to the production of not photons, but electron-positron pairs, a kind of unstable mini-atoms from particles of matter and antimatter. This fact in itself is not unusual - such processes occur regularly in nature and in space. It was amazing how these particles were born.
Put electrons in a corner
The standard model of physics predicts that the frequency of occurrence of such pairs will strongly depend on the angles at which the forming electrons and positrons will fly away - the larger this angle, the fewer "atoms" of positronium, as scientists call such structures, should appear.
Much to the surprise of Krasnahorkai and his colleagues, something different happened - when the angle of expansion approached 140 degrees, the number of electron-positron pairs rose sharply. This indicated that some particles or forces outside the Standard Model were involved in this process.
According to Hungarian physicists, this behavior of beryllium-8 is due to the fact that its nuclei, during their formation in a sheet of lithium, emit a special ultra-light boson, a carrier particle of one of the four fundamental interactions, which decays into an electron and a positron.
Krasnahorkai believes that this particle, whose mass is about 17 MeV (megaelectronvolt), is a so-called "dark photon" - a carrier of electromagnetic interactions that can affect the behavior of dark matter particles.
Protonophobia
Such statements and experimental results attracted the attention of theorists from the University of California at Irvine (USA), who believe that the Krasnahorkai team managed to discover something more - the fifth fundamental force that affects matter along with gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces.
"In the original experimental work on which these theoretical constructions are based, it is said that observations of transitions between excited states of the beryllium-8 atom give results that differ from the current theoretical description. All kinds of deviations in nuclear physics occur regularly, since the excitation spectrum is adequately calculated nuclei, the path of even the easy ones, is extremely difficult, "commented Igor Ivanov, a well-known Russian physicist and popularizer of science, on the study.
As Ivanov writes, similar unexplained bursts and anomalies were found earlier in the course of observing the behavior of neutrinos and in the course of experiments at the LHC, which subsequently "dissipated" as data accumulated and the accuracy of the detectors increased.
"Therefore, in this case, too, it is practically guaranteed a poorly described effect of nuclear physics. Well, the theoretical article on which the note was written in Nature News is just a standard work for theoreticians - let us assume that the deviation is real, and we will speculate on what to be “new physics.” They have the right to do so, ”the scientist concludes.
The world of physics is abuzz, discussing the possible discovery of a fifth fundamental force, acting on par with gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear forces.
The seed was an unusual peak that a team of Hungarian physicists saw. In fact, they were looking for one of the candidates for dark matter particles - the so-called. For this, a piece of lithium-7 was taken, which was irradiated with relatively low-energy protons. As a result, the isotope beryllium-8 was obtained in an excited state. Such an isotope can emit either a photon or an electron-positron pair.
An unusual peak is observed at an angle of about 140 degrees and only for protons with energies of 1.10 and 1.04 MeV.
In the experiment, we followed the angle at which the electron and positron fly out. It was expected that the larger the angle between them, the fewer such pairs. But it turned out that there are slightly more particles at an angle of 140 degrees than at neighboring ones. Such a peak can be explained by introducing the existence of a previously unknown boson - it is now called simply the X boson. The authors of the original experiment hope that this is the dark photon they were looking for. The experiment has been going on for over three years and was published in the archive last year.
And in April this year, a theoretical article by an American group appeared in the archive, which offered an equally elegant explanation - this boson is the carrier of the previously unknown fifth fundamental interaction. In support of their opinion, they also cited a couple of inconsistencies in other experiments, which can also be explained by this hypothesis.
The problem, however, is that so far no one else has checked the Hungarians, although work seems to be going on. And they have a rather strange thing there: a peak at 140 degrees is visible only if beryllium-8 is produced by protons with energies of 1.10 and 1.04 MeV. If it is born with protons with an energy of 1.2 or 0.8 MeV, then the peak magically disappears.
Well, it is strange, of course, that such a light particle (and the X boson has a mass of 50 times less than the mass of a proton), was not noticed in experiments before.
In general, as usual in such situations, it is too early to get involved in HYIP. We will wait for future experiments from independent groups. Well, theorists, of course, will give birth to hypotheses one more bizarre than the other, until the flight of their imagination is limited by new experimental data.
MOSCOW, May 26 - RIA Novosti.Scientists from Hungary have found hints of the existence of physics outside of the Standard Model of the microcosm. They uncovered evidence of not four, but five fundamental forces of nature, according to the journal Nature News Service.
At the end of last year, Attila Krasznahorkay of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Debrecen and his colleagues published an article in which they talked about the unusual results of observations of what happens when the beryllium-8 atom transitions from an excited to a normal state when the synthesis of beryllium during the bombardment of a lithium sheet with protons.
According to scientists, under certain circumstances, this process leads to the production of not photons, but electron-positron pairs, a kind of unstable mini-atoms from particles of matter and antimatter. This fact in itself is not unusual - such processes occur regularly in nature and in space. It was amazing how these particles were born.
Put electrons in a corner
The standard model of physics predicts that the frequency of occurrence of such pairs will strongly depend on the angles at which the forming electrons and positrons will fly away - the larger this angle, the fewer "atoms" of positronium, as scientists call such structures, should appear.
Much to the surprise of Krasnahorkai and his colleagues, something different happened - when the angle of expansion approached 140 degrees, the number of electron-positron pairs rose sharply. This indicated that some particles or forces outside the Standard Model were involved in this process.
According to Hungarian physicists, this behavior of beryllium-8 is due to the fact that its nuclei, during their formation in a sheet of lithium, emit a special ultra-light boson, a carrier particle of one of the four fundamental interactions, which decays into an electron and a positron.
Krasnahorkai believes that this particle, whose mass is about 17 MeV (megaelectronvolt), is a so-called "dark photon" - a carrier of electromagnetic interactions that can affect the behavior of dark matter particles.
Protonophobia
Such statements and experimental results attracted the attention of theorists from the University of California at Irvine (USA), who believe that the Krasnahorkai team managed to discover something more - the fifth fundamental force that affects matter along with gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces.
"In the original experimental work on which these theoretical constructions are based, it is said that observations of transitions between excited states of the beryllium-8 atom give results that differ from the current theoretical description. All kinds of deviations in nuclear physics occur regularly, since the excitation spectrum is adequately calculated nuclei, the path of even the easy ones, is extremely difficult, "commented Igor Ivanov, a well-known Russian physicist and popularizer of science, on the study.
As Ivanov writes, similar unexplained bursts and anomalies were found earlier in the course of observing the behavior of neutrinos and in the course of experiments at the LHC, which subsequently "dissipated" as data accumulated and the accuracy of the detectors increased.
"Therefore, in this case, too, it is practically guaranteed a poorly described effect of nuclear physics. Well, the theoretical article on which the note was written in Nature News is just a standard work for theoreticians - let us assume that the deviation is real, and we will speculate on what to be “new physics.” They have the right to do so, ”the scientist concludes.