FermiLab's Mystery Signal Appears Real --Has It Discovered a New Force of Nature that will Revolutionize Our View of the Universe?

Physicists of the world are getting excited about the news of a possible particle sighting in the debris of proton-antiproton collisions at the Illinois accelerator that showed an unexpected rise in the number of events clustered around 145 GeV – suggesting that they are being produced by an unidentified particle of the same mass. It was immediately certain that whatever the particle was, it was not predicted by the standard model of physics, the leading theory for how particles and forces interact. To add to the mystery, it was clearly not a Higgs boson, the long-sought particle that gives other particles their mass eagerly being pursued at CERN's Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva.

Excitement is based on an analysis of eight years of data collected by Fermilab's CDF experiment that looked at collisions that produced a W boson, carrier of the weak nuclear force, along with two jets of quarks

The CDF team has analysed nearly twice the amount of data the first result was based on, and the result has not gone away. In fact, as CDF physicist Giovanni Punzi told a conference this week in Blois, France, the signal has only gotten stronger. It is reportedly at 4.8 sigma, tantalisingly close to five-sigma certainty needed to be considered "evidence" but still far from the five-sigma gold standard needed to proclaim a true epic discovery.  There is a 1 in 1 million chance that it was just a statistical fluke

 "We're still going through all the data, and we've got two other teams repeating the analysis in a different way, so we're not going to publish a five-sigma result until all of our i's and t's are dotted and crossed," says CDF spokesperson Rob Roser.

An independent peer review will also come from Fermilab's DZero experiment, which has enough of its own data to corroborate or cast doubt on the particle's existence, and is expected to publish its results in the next few weeks.

The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland should also be able to test CDF's result. There's talk that the LHC hasn't seen any such bump – but Roser says that doesn't mean much one way or the other, as the LHC hasn't collected as much data as Fermilab. "They haven't really achieved the sensitivity to see this yet," he explains.

Some experts believe that the mystery force it's a particle called the Z-prime, a hypothetical carrier of a new force similar to the electroweak force, though it would have to be an unusual version of a Z-prime to have slipped by unnoticed at CERN's LEP collider.

Other physicists say it might be a sign of supersymmetry – that postulates that every particle has a shadowy partner. The Fermilab bump could therefore be pairs of "squarks" or "selectrons" – supersymmetric partners of quarks and electrons.

Another, even more esoteric theory posits that it is a technipion – a particle that appears in a theory known as technicolour, which posits a new force that is similar to the strong nuclear force but operates at much higher energies.

These are exciting times in decoding the foundational secrets of the universe we live in.

The Daily Galaxy via FermiLab and newscientist.com

Image top of page is a "charmed quark."

Comments

[Brigitte]

Here's hoping for evidence of supersymmetry, but either way, down with the Standard Model!

[woundedduck]

I don't care what they find as long as it FINALLY leads to flying cars.

[Neogoku]

omg, I love flying cars too! Everyone- Two cheers for flying cars! (that's what happened right?) hip-hip-hooray!

[Gerry]

Wait a minute:
"It is reportedly at 4.8 sigma, tantalisingly close to five-sigma certainty needed to be considered "evidence" but still far from the five-sigma gold standard needed to proclaim a true epic discovery."
So is it close to 5 sigma or far from it? Or, since this is particle physics, is it two opposite things at once?

[Ron]

I think you will love flying cars until they start falling on people's homes.

[iain]

future homes will have airbags on the roof

[Narendra Nath]

Discovery is close to finalisation. Do not understand why sensitivity to observe the event is better at Fermi Lab, than at CERN, Geneva. i tend to agree with the conjecture that the particle seen is a kind of a heavy quark not yet pictures as per the standard model. The latter has to go, as experiment is the reality. I am however, not sure about 5 omega level. to be certain the level has to be not just marginal but well above it, better than 5 omega.

[bigfan]

Flying crs? What next? FYI.

[molosser]

I hope this particle will make my obese wife...well...more obese.To put her on the roof,protecting me from flying cars.

[clown]

yey flying cars! i hope this discovery makes flying puppies too.. i wish for a future that a man can drive flying cars and randomly hitting flying puppies.. we all live for this.

[Simon Jackson]

Well if gravity is best explained by an acceleration wave propagating through space, then coupling via the second differential of acceleration provides 4 terms or 3 forces as composites of gravity. Only one of these is the regular 1/r^2 law.

It's a possibility, and maybe this particle is one of the gravitons. The frequency of mass oscillation which does not cause pushing away local (galactic scale) matter, would decide the energy of local quanta of acceleration waves.

[Sad King Billy]

Future houses will NOT need airbags on the roof despite popular opinion. They will fly too. YAY! Flying houses!

[Yrhtek]

The Jetsons!! 30 years later than predicted but hey better late than never.

[newsreader]

Is there a small problem in this article? I was under the impression 1 million corresponded to 6 sigma. Doesn't that mean 4.8 sigma would closer to 100,000 than 1 million?