CERN Experiment Hints at New Force of Nature

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Cern experiment hints at new force of nature:

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva have spotted an unusual signal in their data that may be the first hint of a new kind of physics.

The LHCb collaboration, one of four main teams at the LHC, analysed 10 years of data on how unstable particles called B mesons, created momentarily in the vast machine, decayed into more familiar matter such as electrons.

The mathematical framework that underpins scientists' understanding of the subatomic world, known as the standard model of particle physics, firmly maintains that the particles should break down into products that include electrons at exactly the same rate as they do into products that include a heavier cousin of the electron, a particle called a muon.

But results released by Cern on Tuesday suggest that something unusual is happening. The B mesons are not decaying in the way the model says they should: instead of producing electrons and muons at the same rate, nature appears to favour the route that ends with electrons.

"We would expect this particle to decay into the final state containing electrons and the final state containing muons at the same rate as each other," said Prof Chris Parkes, an experimental particle physicist at the University of Manchester and spokesperson for the LHCb collaboration. "What we have is an intriguing hint that maybe these two processes don't happen at the same rate, but it's not conclusive."

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