SoylentNews

Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

In the world of physics, nothing gets the blood flowing like the thought that a new particle has been discovered.
[...]
This result has been cooking for quite some time. The first experimental results date back to 2015, with publication in 2016 [doi.org].
[...]
The paper really got the juices flowing. Theorists jumped on the result so fast they inadvertently broke special relativity.
[...]
The theory situation is even more of a mess. It is always possible to extend our models of the Universe to include new particles, including new bosons and new forces. But, it isn’t good enough to match a single experimental result. You have to match all of them.
[...]
So, why did this story flare back up again? A new paper, by the same scientists that published the beryllium results. This time, they measured electron-positron emissions from excited helium. Same experiment, different atom, but the same 17MeV boson was found.

The new result [arxiv.org] is pretty strong evidence.
[...]
If they find the boson, then, great, they’ve won plaudits for someone else. But, if that gun doesn’t smoke, there will be a long and painful search for what makes the original experiment different from the rest.

ArXiv.org [arxiv.org], 2019, ID: 1910.10459 [arxiv.org]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/new-boson-hidden-in-beryllium-decay-check-new-physics-maybe/ [arstechnica.com]

Original Submission