[Fermilab scientists] have found more evidence that sub-atomic particles, called muons, are not behaving in the way predicted by the current theory of sub-atomic physics.
Scientists believe that an unknown force could be acting on the muons.
All of the forces we experience every day can be reduced to just four categories: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force. These four fundamental forces govern how all the objects and particles in the Universe interact with each other.
The findings have been made at a US particle accelerator facility called Fermilab. They build on results announced in 2021 in which the Fermilab team first suggested the possibility of a fifth force of nature.
Anyone knowledgeable have a concise take on particle accelerators? Like, are they working as hoped/expected? Are we going to keep building ever-larger ones to find even more secrets? Is there a possibility we look back in 50 years and realize we spent a lot of effort on a failed theory? My understanding is limited, but I am generally in-support of big science projects.
Now i never specialised in particle accelerators and i can only speak for syncrotron type accelerators (like Diamond in the UK) but i took exams about them and i got to tour one so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Generally, they’re a pretty normal thing in particle physics and materials science now, like, they’re places where a bunch of people have relatively dull 9-5 jobs and parts of them are rented out to random companies. Mostly they’re used for medical/drug research and semiconductor stuff now, and to my knowledge they’ve discovered nothing that would excite the general public for years.
They can’t really be a ‘failed theory’, because they’re SUPER useful for telling us whats in shit and how materials behave, they’re just not the magical world-ending bullshit that the news like to say they are. No one really expected them to be (except the media trying to farm clicks). Making stuff go fast is fun and informative, thats all we need
Nice. Yeah, I figured they must have some variety of relatively mundane applications or else it really wouldn’t make sense to spend billions of dollars on these huge facilities. I’d imagine it would be kind of like a supercomputer or a telescope, where the infrastructure gets built and then different groups take turns running experiments and gathering data for their specific projects.
I’ve heard that we hit diminishing returns a while ago and we’re at a point where whatever we’re seeing is so ephemeral and minute that any conclusions drawn from it are questionable. But I’m just some guy.
I’ve heard similar, which is why I asked. I figure that there must be more to it than just testing the standard model, though. I can’t imagine the neoliberal academic apparatus is going to spend Ukraine-weapons-shipment kind of money just for that.