The highest boson mass W refers to the hole in the Standard Model shield

That Standard Model of Particle Physics It has withstood rigorous tests after decades of testing, and Finding the Higgs boson In 2012 it provided the final piece of the observational puzzle. But that doesn’t stop physicists from constantly searching for new physics beyond the predictions of models. In fact, we know that the model must be incomplete because it does not include gravity and does not explain the existence of dark matter in the universe. Nor can it explain the accelerated rate of expansion of the universe, which many physicists attribute to dark energy.

The latest clue as to how the Standard Model might need to be revised comes from new accurate measurements of the W boson by the Fermilab CDF II collaboration. This measurement yielded a statistically significant higher mass for the W boson than the standard model predicted—within seven standard deviations, according to new paper Published in the journal Science. This also contradicts previous precision measurements of the mass of the W boson.

“The very high mass value of the W boson reported by the CDF Collaboration directly challenges a fundamental element at the heart of the Standard Model, where experimental observations and theoretical predictions are thought to be well established and well understood,” he and Martin wrote at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Mulders (CERN) an accompanying perspective. “This discovery… offers an exciting new perspective on current understanding of the fundamental structure of matter and forces in the universe.”

Because of this, physicists have been here before: baffled by exciting new physics clues only to have their hopes dashed as more evidence emerges. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, and this is certainly an extraordinary claim. “If this is true, it matters because the Standard Model would be wrong,” Clifford Cheung, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, told Ars. “But the disagreements that appear in the trial require extreme caution.”

The Standard Model describes the basic building blocks of the universe and how matter evolves. These blocks can be divided into two basic groups: fermions and bosons. Fermions make up all matter in the universe, including leptons and quarks. Leptons are particles that are not involved in holding atomic nuclei together, such as electrons and neutrinos. Their job is to help matter change through nuclear decay into particles and other chemical elements, using the weak nuclear force. Quarks make up the nucleus of an atom.

Bosons are bonds that hold other particles together. Bosons move from one particle to another, and this causes a force to appear. There are four measurement bosons related to force. Gluons are associated with the strong nuclear force: they “glue” atomic nuclei together. Photons carry the electromagnetic force that causes light to appear. The W and Z bosons carry the weak nuclear force and cause various types of nuclear decay. Then there is the Higgs boson which is a manifestation of the Higgs field. The Higgs field is an invisible entity that encompasses the universe. The interaction between the Higgs field and the particle helps give the particle a mass, with the interacting particle being stronger and having a larger mass.

The W boson is the fundamental building block of the Standard Model, and improving its mass measurements helps physicists continue to improve and test the Standard Model. But that is a difficult measurement. As Science Editor Ars John Timmer Mentioned in 2012:

[The W boson] I am first discovery in the 1980s at CERN’s SPS accelerator, which is now part of LHC . accelerator chain feed. Since then, several accelerators have generated enough W to estimate its mass, all placing it above 80 GeV, in the error range of about 100 MeV…

Since we couldn’t directly detect the W bosons with the device, the researchers had to add up the mass and energy released as they decayed. This includes the energy carried by any photon, the mass and momentum of the particle, and an estimate of the energy carried by the fast-moving neutrino, which passes through the detector without a trace. The remaining error in the mass estimation stems from the uncertainty in these processes.

The CDF II team combed through 10 years of recorded data, totaling approximately 4 million W boson filter events, and yielding a mass of 80.433GeV, ±0.9.4. This contrasts with previous W boson mass measurements, including those made by CDF II in 2012 (80,387 GeV, ± 0.02) and Atlas at CERN. of 2018 (80.370GeV, ±19).

“It’s a confusing result, because there’s just not a lot of tension with the Standard Model – which in itself isn’t going to be as bad as one might think. [new] The physics search will likely be carried out by the Large Hadron Collider — but it’s also been a bit strained by previous measurements, Caltech physicist Michel Babuchi told Ars.

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