Slashdot Mirror
There May Be A Fifth Force of Nature, Study Suggests (space.com)
According to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, physicists at the University of California, Irvine, may have discovered a previously unknown subatomic particle that's evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature. Space.com reports: "[Professor of physics and astronomy Jonathan Feng] and his colleagues analyzed data gathered recently by experimental nuclear physicists at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who were trying to find 'dark photons' -- hypothetical indicators of mysterious dark matter. Dark matter is thought to make up about 85 percent of all matter in the universe, but it neither absorbs nor emits light, so it's impossible to detect directly. 'The experimentalists weren't able to claim that it was a new force,' Feng said. 'They simply saw an excess of events that indicated a new particle, but it was not clear to them whether it was a matter particle or a force-carrying particle.' The new work by Feng and his team suggests that the Hungarians found not a 'dark photon' but rather a 'protophobic X boson' -- a strange particle whose existence could indicate a fifth force of nature. The known electromagnetic force acts on protons and electrons, but this newfound particle apparently interacts only with protons and neutrons, and then only at very short distances, researchers said. The potential fifth force may be linked to the electromagnetic and strong and weak nuclear forces, as 'manifestations of one grander, more fundamental force,' Feng said. It's also possible that the universe of 'normal' matter and forces has a parallel 'dark' sector, with its own matter and forces, Feng added. 'It's possible that these two sectors talk to each other and interact with one another through somewhat veiled but fundamental interactions,' Feng said. 'This dark-sector force may manifest itself as this protophobic force we're seeing as a result of the Hungarian experiment. In a broader sense, it fits in with our original research to understand the nature of dark matter.'"
Locke2005 writes: I've always speculated that there might be forces of nature that we never observed because they were on a much larger or smaller scale than we could detect easily. But now Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, is suggesting there may actually be a fifth force. Of course, this might vanish just like the Higgs Boson evidence did. Can anybody explain better what it was they detected, and why it is being interpreted as evidence of a previously unknown force?
Locke2005 writes: I've always speculated that there might be forces of nature that we never observed because they were on a much larger or smaller scale than we could detect easily. But now Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, is suggesting there may actually be a fifth force. Of course, this might vanish just like the Higgs Boson evidence did. Can anybody explain better what it was they detected, and why it is being interpreted as evidence of a previously unknown force?
Perhaps you're thinking of the 750 GeV "bump" that turned out to be a statistical deviation?
The evidence for the Higgs Boson didn't disappear, it was possible evidence for a heavier particle than Higgs that has been shown to be a statistical fluke.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
The fifth force is... LOVE!? Who's been screwing with this thing?
Attempting to up the hype a bit... Physical Review Letters is the well respected publication where Einstein his paper 1936 “Do gravitational waves exist?”, in which he concludes they do not, which turned out to be wrong. A couple of takeaways here: 1) Physical Review Letters is a forum for heavyweight players in the physics world; 2) that doesn't mean it's always right; 3) Einstein predicted gravity waves in 1916. Later he changed his mind and thought that he was wrong, but he was wrong about that.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Would you consider an a priori bias a bad thing, so long as they are open to fresh ideas? You have to start somewhere in developing your theories.
When reading scientific reports its good to keep in mind such biases but this counts double for popular topics. Speaking as a material scientist, I read each paper with a dash of salt. Unless either the word "graphene" or "perovskite" is in the title in which case I go for a cubic metre instead. Much like topic we are discussing, they tend to be governed by the law of "publish first think later"
Yes, agreed, everyone must start with presuppositions. It's how the initial conceptualization of a hypothesis is made possible, as step one to scientific method. It's when a certain type of presupposition is elevated to being established scientific "fact", in contradiction to how science actually works, that I have an issue with it.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The summary and the PHYS.org article link to Arxiv, not a peer-reviewed Phys Rev Letters article. The Arvix article is also way too long to be published in PRL. So what gives? Where is the peer-reviewed article?
If you google "what are the forces of nature" the first result says there are 5.
When I searched for "what are the forces of nature" (without the quotes) in Google just now, the first result was the Wikipedia disambiguation page for "Force of nature", which says "In physics, there are four fundamental forces." as the second line. The second result is the Wikipedia page for Forces of Nature , a romantic comedy starring Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock, and the third result is for a HowStuffWorks page entitled "What are the four fundamental forces of nature?".
Below that are some news articles about this "maybe a fifth force" story.
My example is implicit--but clearly understood, and hence immediately downmodded, regardless of scientific rationality of doing so, based on the premise stated. ;)
For the four forces versus five forces question, I'll likewise let scientific inquiry play out.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
It seems kind of bewildering to me that signs weren't seen of its existence decades ago. oO
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Your first example was downmodded because it is off topic and artless; any claim of anachronistic bias makes it no less so. Scientific inquiry continues to grow exponentially as it always has, maybe this will turn out true maybe not. I joined the debate because I get tired of people's acrimony towards modern science, the answers won't be here tomorrow but there is progress.
Hard to see, the dark side is. but Once you start down the dark research path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
Sounds like the fifth and strongest force of nature is willfull ignorance.
I wonder how your kind would have reacted when all the previous discoveries were first announced.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I suggest we call it "The Force"
Pony science? Which pony, exactly? ;)
Back to the subject on hand: what force is everyone here hoping gets discovered? I'm really rooting for a space-dilating inflation gravity; that could potentially resolve all black hole paradoxes by eliminating singularities and disjoint regions of spacetime, explain inflation, and greatly illuminate the nature of the Big Bang.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
That's weird, this is what I got. I guess it's a sponsored link? It even showed a blurb from the site above the link as if Google were just answering my question.
No, Strassler's a Real Physicist, and that link does show up, later in the list, in my search.
However, whilst the Higgs field might be a force field (in the sense of something that can change the motion of an object, i.e. can transfer momentum), it's apparently not considered one of the "fundamental" forces; the Standard Model has only four "fundamental" forces. The proposed new force would be a fifth.
these are not forces but states of matter ... solid, liquid, gazeous, plasma and ether energy ... (in the right order)
So far the evidence is limited to one experiment. There will be more of them within a year or two from different teams, then we can have more confidence. So far, there are interesting, internally consistent possible explanations from two teams for this anomaly, but they are not so easy to fit in the current model as to accept them immediately. For all we know, this may go the same way as the FTL neutrinos, etc.
I am just waiting for the torrent of New Age clickbait on my facebook feed saying that physics has finally found evidence of the mystical magical quantum life force energy that their super-dooper-quantum-yoga tradition has known for centuries.
John_Chalisque
Okay, troll. You know nothing about me, you have no ability to know anything about me. No point in spooling out your content-free nonsense. Enjoy.
Well, we know your first post doesn't really make any sense. We know you like to just say the secular left and leave it at that as if it's supposed to mean something and we know you seem to think other people think they have physic powers when no such claims were made or even insinuated and we know you discard concern for your wellbeing with thinly veiled contempt. Based on that I'd agree that you might not quite be right in the head and could do with some professional advice. Unless they are part of the secular left and just decide random things, eh?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
My example is implicit--but clearly understood, and hence immediately downmodded, regardless of scientific rationality of doing so, based on the premise stated. ;)
What? Link to the people who have decided what DM is. They need to unambiguously be 'secular left' for your point to make sense. Go ahead and do it now.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Occam's razor. Some things are more likely to be contained in dark matter, others are unlikely without some kind of additional and convincing evidence.
Science has already well established Chuck Norris as the 5th
Back in the 1980's there was a reanalysis of some old gravity measurements made by Roland von Eotvos which suggested that gravity might have a short-range, composition-dependent component, a "fifth force". This inspired a number of experiments, with some positives and some negative results. Eventually, the positive results were all explained and the fifth force went away.
Coincidentally, in regard to this recent research, one of the hard to explain positive results also came out of UC Irvine.
Attempting to up the hype a bit
Please don't. The paper contains a wildly speculative idea which, while technically possible, is based on a single, unconfirmed experimental result. Hundreds of these are published every year even in PRL and the overwhelming majority do not pan out. This is just the very early stage in the scientific brain storming process looking for new ideas which might be right and at this stage almost none of them are. The time to start getting interested is when another experiment appears to have data confirming one of the predictions of this new theory - and even then it does not always work out!
Reasons to be skeptical about these authors and their methodology: they publishing the same claim over with changes in data but no explanation for why their numbers are changing. This article explains the physics as well as the reservations about the claim: https://www.quantamagazine.org...
This blog entry by a senior scientist at Fermi Lab has interesting comments on previous experimental results from the Hungarian group the UCI theoretical work is based on:
http://www.livescience.com/552...
What about the Hungarian group? I know none of them personally, but the article was published in Physical Review Letters — a chalk mark in the win column. However, the group has also published two previous papers in which comparable anomalies were observed, including a possible particle with a mass of 12 million electron volts and a second publication claiming the discovery of a particle with a mass of about 14 million electron volts. Both of these claims were subsequently falsified by other experiments.
Further, the Hungarian group has never satisfactorily disclosed what error was made that resulted in these erroneous claims. Another possible red flag is that the group rarely publishes data that doesn't claim anomalies. That is improbable. In my own research career, most publications were confirmation of existing theories. Anomalies that persist are very, very, rare.
My teacher said gravity isn't a force, it's "just" geometry. Electromagnetic and weak is the after certain energy levels. On the other hand we used to count magnetic and electric forces as related but separate.
Red Leader Standing By!
At first, I read "secular Light" and thought it a nice joke. The real version of the statement sounds much worse.
Higgs Boson Truther ITT. Never thought I'd see the day.
We may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean that they are not, in fact, out to get us...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
More likely a difference between your Google profiles. When two are searching the same, they won't find the same... (Pro tip: disable personalization every time you want to show that something is the first entry. And tell the other one to do it too.)
It seems that this is an example of the 'that's interesting' phenomenon. You know, when scientists are studying something and they see an interesting and unexpected observation.
Such events have led to interesting discoveries. I like this one better than string theory and using Dark Matter to fine tune those equations that 'splain everything.
And at this point, 'like' is entirely appropriate. Gonna need a lot more work to get to certainty.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You prefer to think it's simpler to believe in what you can't find, rather than what you haven't previously seen?
Interesting application. I'm trying to work that out.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I am really confused over your posts, and I've been crazy things on Slashdot since 1999. Where has the secular left stated what can't be in dark matter? Is this a religious thing? If you're arguing God is in dark matter, then you are aware that dark matter is a substance, not a place, right?
It penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
Dark Matter could contain anything... but conveniently the secular Left has determined what kinds of things it definitely doesn't contain.
That helps with the physics... right?
All bow before the Gap God!
All bow before the Gap God!
Whoa, heathen. Don't go putting your weirdo deities on everyone else. Some of us pray to J. Crew Jesus or the Old Navy Oversoul.
Nothing posted to
" I'm really rooting for a space-dilating inflation gravity; that could potentially resolve all black hole paradoxes by eliminating singularities and disjoint regions of spacetime, explain inflation, and greatly illuminate the nature of the Big Bang."
And warp space, enable a cool ftl drive, and cause ridges on the foreheads of those who work too close to it.
Yes. Its part of a chain of evidence, not a stand-alone question and I prefer to follow the scientific evidence. So far this hasn't provided any evidence for a non-secular answer. Come back if we suddenly find any evidence of a God sitting in the middle making it work.
Well... not exactly. More to the point, exactly the opposite. An inflationary force would make distances between regions of spacetime greater, not reduce them.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
You mean physics isn't finished yet!? Oh the horror!
Physics has always been "in a muddle", from the time before Newton, in the sense you assert since there has never been a time when we thought we understood it all.
There was a short time at the end of the 1800s when some made a silly claim that physics was complete, around 1888 when electromagnetic radiation was discovered. Except for the Ultraviolet Catastrophe prediction that all hot objects would radiate infinitely high frequency photons, and the photoelectric effect that had already been discovered in 1887 that could not be explained. And then new unexplained physics started showing up every couple of years in the 1890s. The non-existence of the ether shown in 1892, the discovery of X-rays, radioactivity, the electron, Curie's work showing that an enormous mysterious energy source existed inside the atom...
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Peter Gabriel just called from Scotland. He says it's the Fifth of Force.
Will the force be with them?
This is my sig, there are many like it but this one is mine
Basing another religion on unfounded behaviour is NOT science
What the fuck are you on about?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
There! Are! Four! Forces!
Man stupidity.
Irony.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I think you might be hitting on it. It's a religion thing but he doesn't want to say it straight out. Because it's embarrassing. Because it's stupid. At least he realises that much.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The worst application of Occam's Razor I've yet seen on a site full of twisted interpretations.
Let me give you a hint. Occam's Razor says nothing about what is "likely", and Occam was theist.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Natural Selection says it will be more like a stagger, then a drop, for you actually.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Three actually. The electromagnetic and weak force are manifestations of the same force at different scales.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
There is no reason why someone else should be the one to "come back".
We have precisely the same scientific knowledge for all conjectures. That is, none. Your bias isn't the correct one "by default".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Consider reading (or listening to) Cosmosapiens. It's a FANTASTIC analysis of all aspects of human evolution from the fundamental particles all the way through societal and species cognitive evolution. The author, John Hands, is very analytical and considers all sides of the relative specialist fields.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
And it is, as of yet, untested. Therefore, the details of what it does or does not contain, science has no statement on.
No conclusion can be drawn, scientifically. Even if one has a preference for a "sciencey-sounding" set of preemptive conclusions. That is not science.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I think we have discovered an Electric Monk on Slashdot (a robot that was designed to believe stuff so that humans don't need to).
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What about charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness?
"More to the point, exactly the opposite."
....
You can't have an opposite without it's own opposite.
"An inflationary force would make distances between regions of spacetime greater, not reduce them."
And the impact on adjacent spacetime regions would be to
Not much is known about the nature of the strong force. Perhaps this is some more "color" on the nature of the strong force (which is suspected to bind protons and neutrons, but in it's "color-ed" form is suspected to bind quarks together).
I am absolutely certain that dark matter is not made of boiled peanuts or teeny tiny dancing bobcats.
Am I a member of the secular left yet? Do I get a card? Is there an oath or something?
"Dark Matter could contain anything... but conveniently the secular Left has determined what kinds of things it definitely doesn't contain."
If they're suggesting that it doesn't contain God or Trump, then I tend to agree.
This is gold. What humorless, dour clod modded it down as offtopic? Ah, a butthurt administrator, I'm guessing..
It rarely hurts to insert a little topical humor in these discussions.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
We just need to add another 14 dimensions..
Ok - how about doing some real world experiments ..
Too much BS already this week...
I have no idea what you are going on about now.
Hypotheses are formed, then tested. Until they are tested, no scientific conclusion can be formed. Since a conclusion has not been formed regarding the specifics of content of Dark Matter, science says precisely zero about what may or may not be present.
In no way does this mean your "educated guess" means anything scientifically at all. There is no need to bring in your False Dichotomy thinking on this. If you need to present this within a typical fallacious "science versus religion" framework, consider yourself wrong according to science, and wrong according to religion. This is, if you assert you have any evidentiary or epistemological superiority for one presumption over another.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Thanks, but following previous evidence is not an assumption. Occam's beliefs are irrelevant to choosing the less assumptive path.
It seems you like to pretend you have no preconceptions - but the secular comment shows otherwise. There is no evidence to show a higher power - discuss.
YOUR MOM!
Wait, that's gravity. Never mind.
Thanks. I might just do that.
Fair enough - I wasn't aware of the evidence for a higher power directing the forces in the standard model. If you can point me to it I will reeducate myself and we can discuss further.
The application of the standard model would say nothing about the content of Dark Matter, any more than by saying if we stipulate X amount of matter within Y space, you can thereby say what that matter contains in our "everyday" observable universe. That is the statement of mine you are responding to, not what physics applies. Does it contain complex structures? Life? We have no idea. You appear to be angling for a categorical dismissal you have no basis to make based on a red herring of what system of physics may apply.
As for your question, though, what is your position on the scientific validity of considering "random" as an analyzable, hence scientific, causal factor?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Sorry, but I'm not angling for a categorical dismissal. I'd go as far as to say that we cannot 'completely' dismiss the chance that God or life exists in dark matter or any matter. The suggestion that all theories are equally valid is what I'm dismissing. You are bringing the assumption that God exists; there is no data to suggest that. Just like there is no data to suggest its made of chocolate. I refute that we have the same scientific knowledge for all conjectures.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with ''random" as a causal factor - but I do think its a factor to be considered, accounted for and perhaps reduced where possible. I guess that makes it a causal factor.
Occam's beliefs are relevant in that he correctly applied his Razor, which contrary to common incorrect restatement, does not make any claims to determine the likelihood of a particular model's correctness, or exclude his own theistic model.
All else being absolutely equal between two competing models, Occam's Razor specifies that the simpler model be used -for the purposes of conceptual economy-. The simpler model is used because it is simpler. That implies greater ease of further use in analysis, again, all else being completely equal.
It speaks to a model's straightforward use, not its preferability as representing fact. Were that the case, scientific progress would come to a halt, because in the great majority of cases (i.e. Newtonian physics), the simpler model is simply the inaccurate one.
"Presumptive path" would be a separate heuristic from what Occam's Razor addresses, and I suggest care in not conflating the two such that one's argument is equivocating from "useful" to "true".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Cowboy Neal. :-)
I mean, if you're gonna shitpost about the Left, at least make it relevant to the CURRENT_YEAR.
Breaking news: Due to concerns of racism, fourteen top research universities in the United States and Europe have banned the term "Dark Matter" stating that "it denigrates minorities as it equates darkness with being unobserved and unnoticed while at the same time making up most of the universe. The current discourse serves only to entrench White Supremacy and White Privilege, it has to be stopped." They have recommended that scientists instead use the term "Matter of Darkness" and that the scientific literature stop preferring so called "ordinary matter" over "Matter of Darkness".
They also recommend that instead of forcing matter into 'baryonic' and 'non-baryonic', which they allege are social constructs, that matter be allowed to form it's own identity free from the Cis white heterosexual orthodoxy.
"This move isn't anti-science in any way", writes prominent Feminist scholar and advocate Anita Sarkeesian, "this is about equality for all matter, not just Matter of Darkness. Why is one form of matter preferred over another, if not because of the patriarchy?"
Despite the reservations held by those in the scientific community, the universities are standing firm and have stated their intentions to withhold funding for researchers who refuse to abide by the new guidelines.
Meanwhile Twitter has been abuzz with hashtags both promoting the move such as #NonBaryonicLeptonsMatter and #YesAllWIMPS. On the other side, right wing trolls have started their own hashtag, #AllMatterMatters, and have even coined a term for those fighting for inclusiveness and fairness in the scientific literature: Matter Rights Activists, or MRA for short.
The closest known thing to being an opposite of inflation is gravity. If you want a force that can shorten the distance between two objects, that's the one.
Inflate (dilate) them. Inflation doesn't push things into adjacent areas of existing space; it creates new space.** It's important to ask: why did inflation exist - and then just stop? It's a much more satisfying response that inflation is just "something that happens (regardless of its nature) in areas of extreme mass density", rather than "something that happens only at a certain moment of time, for no particular reason". Well, then what's being described is a dilatory force similar (but with an opposite sign) to gravity. Obviously it cannot be a perfect symmetric inverse of gravity, or the two forces would cancel each other out. There has to be an asymmetry - inflation has to dominate in extreme conditions, while gravity dominates in what is "normal" conditions from our perspective. And since we're describing a force, there should be a force carrier, an unknown gauge boson. And that's what I hope to see discovered.
** One has to be cautious with their wording when discussing spacetime distortion because your choice of geometry can exchange parameters such as position, time, etc and everything is relative to your choice of reference frame.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
Forever 21 Goddesses or die, infidel!