This story was originally published in our January/February 2022 issue. Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
There’s no such thing as being alone in the cosmos. Physicists have known for decades that particles and antiparticles pop in and out of existence all the time, some of which we know about and many of which likely remain undiscovered. Physicists search for signs of new particles beyond the Standard Model — the theory that describes how elementary particles and fundamental forces interact — to push physics into new realms.
In April, an international collaboration of more than 200 scientists, based at the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, reported findings that may open a door to physics that transcends the Standard Model. The experiment centered on muons, which are positively or negatively charged short-lived subatomic particles with about 200 times as much mass as electrons. Like ...
