Researchers have made new findings on the W boson that is contradicting the previous understanding of the Universe. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
What is the W boson study all about?
A new study reveals that W boson, a fundamental particle can change our understanding of the universe. According to the study, the particle has a significantly greater mass than previously theorized in physics. The Standard Model of particle physics was considered the golden rule. Over 400 researchers studied over four million W bosons out of the “dataset of around 450 trillion collisions” in 10 years. According to Ashutosh Kotwal, the Tevatron collider in Illinois was initially used. Later, they used the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) for collecting data. Kotwal, the lead author is a physicist from Duke University.
Following rigorous and meticulous measurement they found that collisions occur at mind-bending speeds by smashing W bosons. “In this framework of clues that there are missing pieces to the standard model, we have contributed one more, very interesting, and somewhat large clue,” stated Kotwal. The new theory is “probably the most successful scientific theory that has ever been written down”.
More on the new theory
“It can make fantastically precise predictions. It’s like a house of cards, you pull on one bit of it too much, and the whole thing comes crashing down,” stated Harry Cliff. Cliff is a particle physicist from Cambridge University working at the Large Hadron Collider. ”This is either a major discovery or a problem in the analysis of data,” stated Jan Stark. (spinabifida.net) Stark is a physicist and the director of CNRS, France. Additionally, he added that “quite heated discussions in the years to come”.
The research determined the mass of the W boson as twice more than the previous understanding. “The chances of getting a five sigma result by dumb luck is one in three and a half million. If this is real, and not some systematic bias or misunderstanding of how to do the calculations, then it’s a huge deal because it would mean there’s a new fundamental ingredient to our universe that we haven’t discovered before,” stated Cliff. “But if you’re going to say something as big as we’ve broken the standard model of particle physics, and there are new particles out there to discover, to convince people of that you probably need more than one measurement from more than one experiment,” he added.