Scientists believe they may have discovered evidence for a fifth force

Squeegee Beckenheim

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Squeegee Beckenheim
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https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/22/world/fifth-force-of-nature-scn-trnd/index.html

Scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Atomki) have posted findings showing what could be an example of that fifth force at work.

The scientists were closely watching how an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed. The particles split at an unusual angle -- 115 degrees -- which couldn't be explained by known physics.

The study's lead scientist, Attila Krasznahorkay, told CNN that this was the second time his team had detected a new particle, which they call X17, because they calculated its mass at 17 megaelectronvolts.

"X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email.
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Worth noting that while the paper has not yet been peer reviewed.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/22/world/fifth-force-of-nature-scn-trnd/index.html



Worth noting that while the paper has not yet been peer reviewed.
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Interesting take by a particle physicist who specialized in data analysis ...

The 17 MeV Anomaly That Would Not Die

I rather like this:

This does not mean they cannot possibly have bumped into something interesting: but if I were the referee of their article, my assessment would be "MAJOR REVISIONS, and run a F***ING SPELL-CHECKER before you even think of resubmitting!"

(Yeah, very likely not evidence of a fifth force :p )
 
Sexual attraction? It drives the universe.

Personally I am researching fusion reactions that happen at what seems hotter than room temp.
 
I'm sorry, I'm not really impressed by a mysterious force that only works when "excited helium atoms" shoot their load at unusual angles. That sounds more like a party trick than a cosmic force. Replace "helium" with "Kevin" and I've seen it done.
 
"X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email.

Just for fun, what could this even mean?

We know dark matter is connected to the "visible world" via one of the existing four forces, gravity. It has mass. That's why we call it "matter".On the other hand, we call it "dark" because it doesn't seem to interact with anything via electromagnetism.

I'm not up to date on the latest hypotheses. Are we assuming the strong and weak forces still operate, in dark matter?
 
Wudang said:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces-scrutiny-20160607/

If you're in a rush scroll down to "pandaemonium". The lab has a track record for anomalous readings that disappear. My vote : nothing too see, move along.
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The article is about the group's previous result back n 2016. It is a bit disturbing that they reported 2 previous results for bosons with different masses than that result which vanished with this improved experiment. What makes the result dubious to me is
  1. They did not make further improvements to see if the anomaly persisted.
    They seem immediately gone onto the experiment reported now. Their previous leader (Fokke de Boer) with his "a pandemonium of more than 10 candidate bosons” may have inspired some institutional confirmation bias so they just stopped with what they think is a valid result.
  2. No one has replicated their result in the last 3 years.
  3. This new result might be with similar instruments and analysis that lead to the previous result.
    An important experimental replication is to get the same results from different apparatus and analysis. This reduces the chance of systematic errors. If they just swapped a beryllium-8 source with a helium source, that is not good.
 
Why can't they just test it on monkeys or rats? I know there is the humane concern but you only have to blow up a few rats to know that you've got something real here.
 
theprestige said:
"X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email.

Just for fun, what could this even mean?

We know dark matter is connected to the "visible world" via one of the existing four forces, gravity. It has mass. That's why we call it "matter".On the other hand, we call it "dark" because it doesn't seem to interact with anything via electromagnetism.

I'm not up to date on the latest hypotheses. Are we assuming the strong and weak forces still operate, in dark matter?
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone knows. Since both of those forces only operate on subatomic scales, we have no way to tell whether dark matter is affected by them. It's an important question though. If the answer is yes, then it follows that dark matter is bound into something like atoms and molecules. It might be easier to detect if there were sizeable chunks of it floating around. If the strong and weak forces do not affect dark matter, then it would consist of bare particles, which may or may not be in the range detectable by our particle smashers. I think we would have to actually detect and examine some before we could find out.
 
theprestige said:
"X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email.

Just for fun, what could this even mean?

We know dark matter is connected to the "visible world" via one of the existing four forces, gravity. It has mass. That's why we call it "matter".On the other hand, we call it "dark" because it doesn't seem to interact with anything via electromagnetism.

I'm not up to date on the latest hypotheses. Are we assuming the strong and weak forces still operate, in dark matter?
Click to expand...

Attempts to detect the dark matter have been via the weak force. We know it doesn't interact electromagnetically, but it may interact with the weak force. The most likely candidates for dark matter particles are WIMPS, the W being the important part here: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.

But we don't actually know if they interact with the weak force. We could just be out of luck and the dark matter particles don't interact with any force (other than gravity) that interacts with the particles of the standard model. In that case we're not going to get any direct detection.

I think there are some good reasons to think that it does interact via the weak force though, but what those reasons are is beyond my level of understanding.
 
It's been a few years since my physics courses, but I thought I remembered one of my professors saying that there are only 3 forces, as the weak and electromagnetic forces had been joined? The weak electromagnetic force. Or did I dream that?

Sorry, haven't had my morning coffee yet. I may feel like a dunce in an hour or so.
 
I've always hated the term "weak force". It feels judgmental. That force is fine as it is, and does not need to be defined by comparison to other forces. If people don't stop labelling with hurtful comparisons it may develop body dysmorphia and low self-esteem.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I've always hated the term "weak force". It feels judgmental. That force is fine as it is, and does not need to be defined by comparison to other forces. If people don't stop labelling with hurtful comparisons it may develop body dysmorphia and low self-esteem.
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It may start self-identifying as gravity or magic and then the older scientists will keep getting called out for misattributing it or complaining that you can't mess with dimensional analysis and then it'll just be chaos.
 
DuvalHMFIC said:
It's been a few years since my physics courses, but I thought I remembered one of my professors saying that there are only 3 forces, as the weak and electromagnetic forces had been joined? The weak electromagnetic force. Or did I dream that?

Sorry, haven't had my morning coffee yet. I may feel like a dunce in an hour or so.
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They combine under certain conditions but they are normally separate.

In fact, in the early universe there probably was a single unified force. Throwing gravity into the combination of the other three has been a very elusive goal of physics.
 
DuvalHMFIC said:
It's been a few years since my physics courses, but I thought I remembered one of my professors saying that there are only 3 forces, as the weak and electromagnetic forces had been joined? The weak electromagnetic force. Or did I dream that?

Sorry, haven't had my morning coffee yet. I may feel like a dunce in an hour or so.
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Correct electro-weak.
 
This Is Why The ‘X17’ Particle And A New, Fifth Force Probably Don’t Exist has a good description of the experiments and why the result is not likely to be correct.
  • "the two experiments were performed at the same facility with the same equipment and the same researchers, using the same techniques" so it is not independent replication.
  • "there are independent experiments out there that should have created or seen this particle, if it exists."
    Experiments producing positron/electron pairs are fairly common and there may be similar analysis of the results in the literature. These researchers should have examined the literature and discussed why others did not already find a X17 particle or noted that no current experiment could have found it. Instead they discuss future experiments.
  • "But the most suspicious evidence against it comes from the data itself."
    A calibration curve that has a slightly worse fit between about 100° and 125° is applied to the high energy curve to get an anomaly between about 100° and 125°. Is the anomaly real or is there a problem with the calibration?
  • Likewise why do the 2 experiments produce signals at different angles when it should be the same positron + electron + X17 particle interaction?
 
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