A New Path for Physics
Photo by Andrew George on Unsplash
The Standard Model is one of the most successful accomplishments physicists have achieved in the 20th century. It is an equation that incorporates three of the fundamental forces to describe the interactions between elementary particles.
The four fundamental forces are known as the strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, and gravity. These forces are what governs the universe and the standard model was able to bind three of the fundamental forces that were responsible for particle interactions: the strong force, weak force, and electromagnetic force.
Elementary particles are the most foundational building blocks of the universe. As of now, the elementary particles are known not to be constructed of anything else. In other words, they are the smallest particles in the universe and the Standard Model was our most accurate device to predict the interactions between elementary particles.
However, recently in the Muon G-2 Experiment, physicists found a strong likelihood that the Standard Model is incorrect. The mass of an elementary particle called the “muon” showed sufficiently significant error between the experimental results and theoretical predictions to conclude that the Standard Model was missing something.
Muons are very similar to electrons. For example, they have properties like negative charges that electrons consist of. However, muons are considered to have more mass than electrons. As a result, it is very easy for scientists to spot anomalies within the muon.
The error that results from the Muon G-2 Experiment are decimals apart. While people might think that this difference is trivial, the Standard Model was designed to predict within a significantly smaller range of error. However, the error that was made in the Muon G-2 Experiment continuously show to go beyond the scope of the error bound.
Although people might think that errors indicate failure in science, the implications of the Muon G-2 Experiment are what makes physicists thrilled. This is because in physics, it is through these errors that new ideas and clarifications are made. From this error, physicists can dive deeper into what exactly we are missing about our knowledge in particle physics.
One of the possible theories that people have hypothesized include dark matter and energy. From the implications of the experiment, we might open our way to understanding one of the greatest mysteries of the universe.