+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹ Posted April 6, 2011 Subscriber¹ Share Posted April 6, 2011 Physicists at Fermilab might have found evidence of a new elementary particle or an entirely new force of nature, suggesting the nation?s biggest science experiment is about to go out with a bang.A new analysis of 10,000 proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron showed a weird result a couple hundred times ? the numbers do not agree with the accepted theories of elementary particles and the forces that govern them. Post-collision jets of electrons and heavy particles called W bosons did not behave as they should. The New York Times? Dennis Overbye explains: ?In about 250 times more cases than expected, the total energy of the jets clustered around a value of about 144 billion electron volts, as if they were the decay products of a hitherto unsuspected particle with that mass-energy.? There are actually a few anomalies in the data, including asymmetrical behavior of top quarks. Together the data suggest a new particle, a new force or at the very least, new behavior among recognized particles and forces. This new particle could be a new boson, though not the elusive Higgs (the Higgs decays into heavier particles than this new thing does). One theory posted to the physics arXiv says it could be a new brand of Z boson. Another theory posits that it?s a heavy version of a gluon, the particle that glues quarks together, reports Science News. Whatever it is has physicists pretty excited. Fermilab theorist Christopher Hill, who was not part of the team, told the New York Times: ?If it is real, it would be the most significant discovery in physics in half a century.? Last fall, Fermilab physicists said they detected evidence for a new class of neutrino, a ?sterile? particle that only interacts through gravity. Those results came out of the MiniBooNE detector; this is is the result of a different experiment, Tevatron?s CDF experiment. The team posted their results to the physics arXiv online and submitted the results to the journal Physical Review Letters. As the Times points out, verifying these results would be an impressive finale for the Tevatron, which will shut down later this year when it runs out of money. But that leaves even more juicy targets for the Large Hadron Collider. Source: Popular Science Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent Posted April 6, 2011 Share Posted April 6, 2011 Here's the arxiv: Light Z' Bosons at the TevatronMatthew R. Buckley, Dan Hooper, Joachim Kopp, Ethan Neil (Submitted on 30 Mar 2011 (v1), last revised 1 Apr 2011 (this version, v2)) New gauge bosons with Standard Model-like couplings to leptons are constrained by collider searches to be heavier than approximately ~1 TeV. A Z' boson with suppressed couplings to leptons, however, could be much lighter and possess substantial couplings to Standard Model quarks. In this article, we consider a new leptophobic Z' gauge boson as a simple and well motivated extension of the Standard Model, and discuss several of its possible signatures at the Tevatron. We find that three of the recent anomalies reported from the Tevatron - in particular the top-quark forward-backward asymmetry and excesses in the 3b and W + 2 jets final states - could be explained by a new Z' with a mass of approximately 150 GeV, relatively large couplings to quarks, and suppressed couplings to electrons and muons. Moreover, we find that such a particle could also mediate the interactions of dark matter, leading to potentially interesting implications for direct detection experiments. Comments: 12 pages, 7 figures. v2: updated references Subjects: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) Report number: FERMILAB-PUB-11-154-A-T Cite as: arXiv:1103.6035v2 [hep-ph] Link to PDF research paper Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
COKid Posted April 6, 2011 Share Posted April 6, 2011 I don't pretend to understand any of this stuff, but when I first saw the post, I thought, "Gee, I wonder if they are looking for new funding?" Then I read in the first post "As the Times points out, verifying these results would be an impressive finale for the Tevatron, which will shut down later this year when it runs out of money." Funny how coincidences like this happen! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zain Adeel Posted April 6, 2011 Share Posted April 6, 2011 onto the LHC with this experiment then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahhell Posted April 6, 2011 Share Posted April 6, 2011 Sweet...first steps to the Force. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted April 6, 2011 Share Posted April 6, 2011 Maybe "a" force, but probably not "the" force ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zain Adeel Posted April 6, 2011 Share Posted April 6, 2011 Strong am I with the force... hmmmm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Growled Member Posted April 7, 2011 Member Share Posted April 7, 2011 The more we learn the more we see there is to learn. Interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zain Adeel Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 interesting and exciting. The standard model needs better integration with the other model. Or we need one unified model. Thats why we cant seem to understand the missing link. Im waiting for some unnaturally big genius to show us the way forward. Someone who can top the GR (general relativity) that 12yr old boy gets my vote :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 HIGGS! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Del-Funky Smelly Be. Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 interesting and exciting. The standard model needs better integration with the other model. Or we need one unified model. Thats why we cant seem to understand the missing link. Im waiting for some unnaturally big genius to show us the way forward. Someone who can top the GR (general relativity) that 12yr old boy gets my vote :p Well that genius perhaps is Michio Kaku :p :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zain Adeel Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 Michio Kaku ... well Brilliant!!.. he is just like Einstien.. too engulfed in finding the unifying theory that he too will stay lost there and not wonder about other possibilities :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 of course, Fermi labs. Batavia represents! looks like FTL drives are going to be a reality sooner than we expected, heh Doc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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