Physicists confirm possible discovery of fifth force of nature

Recent findings indicating the possible discovery of a previously unknown subatomic particle may be evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters by theoretical physicists at the University of California, Irvine.

then

“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.”

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Again?

> Hungarians’ work uncovered a radioactive decay anomaly that points to the existence of a light particle just 30 times heavier than an electron.

A bit like the muon then, unexpected and 207 times heavier than an electron. Needed a radical rethink of particle physics at the time to explain it. BTW, at the time of it’s discovery, the muon was thought to be a new (in this case fourth) force of nature. It wasn’t.

Light particles like this get proposed every once in a while. You’d think that that region of particle mass would already have been explored thoroughly back in the 1960s, but often experiments there just quickly glanced at that mass range before rapidly moving on to bigger and higher masses. There’s an urgent need to go back and study those low mass regions more thoroughly.

Not that I believe for a moment that this is a fifth force of nature, but it may be something new.