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A 'no-brainer Nobel Prize': Hungarian scientists may have found a fifth force of nature
Scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Atomki) have posted findings showing what could be an example of that fifth force at work.
The scientists were closely watching how an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed. The particles split at an unusual angle -- 115 degrees -- which couldn't be explained by known physics.
The study's lead scientist, Attila Krasznahorkay, told CNN that this was the second time his team had detected a new particle, which they call X17, because they calculated its mass at 17 megaelectronvolts. "X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email.
Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Irvine told CNN he's been following the Hungarian team's work for years, and believes its research is shaping up to be a game changer. If these results can be replicated, "this would be a no-brainer Nobel Prize," he said.
Also at ScienceAlert and Popular Mechanics.
2016: Observation of Anomalous Internal Pair Creation in 8Be: A Possible Indication of a Light, Neutral Boson (open, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.042501) (DX)
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday November 26 2019, @02:05PM
How do you miss 17 MeV during the transition of a photon into an electron/positron pair? 17 MeV is a _lot_ of energy when you're talking about a photon. The minimum photon energy required for pair production is about 1.022 MeV [wikipedia.org] (2x electron energy). Even 1.022 MeV is way up in the gamma ray spectrum.
It would be interesting to see if there's a 'knee' in the energy vs angle data right around 18.022 MeV since below that energy production of the X17 is not energetically possible.