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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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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?
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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!
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.
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?
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?
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!
"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.