Beyond the Standard Model
Universe; 6 like gravitons, as they have not been reproduced on earth, there has been no way of studying them directly, so all we have now are theories.
Alongside dark matter, there are still unsolved question regarding anti-matter; in particular, the reason for an initial imbalance between matter and antimatter, that led to only ‘1 particle per billion’ 7 surviving to this day. Once again, however, this is an issue whose solution is still ongoing, as studies focus on the question of CP violation, 8 which revealed that matter and antimatter behave differently on a fundamental level, and do not reflect each other’s b ehaviour. All of these issues do not even consider the current contradictions that exist between the data that would be expected from the standard model, and the experimental data that has been obtained. Only a year ago, scientists at Fermilab found that the W boson (the force particle responsible for the weak nuclear force) was far heavier than it was predicted to be by the standard model 9 - with a discrepancy of 7 standard deviations, compared to the usual limit of 5 SD. 10 There is also the issue of the ‘hierarchy problem ’, which asks why there is such a startling difference in strength between the weak nuclear force and gravity, that has yet to be explained. This implies that the Higgs boson should be far heavier than it was detected to be. These are but some of the many discrepancies that remind us of how the SM, while successful in its own right, is nonetheless incomplete, and unable to explain the differences in predicted and actual values, alongside failing to explain all major phenomena in physics. While many of these problems cannot be tackled as of now, there are still a few places where physicists are able to begin prodding at what the future of particle physics may be.
Current focuses and experiments
Within the SM, neutrinos are described as massless leptons of zero charge, which correspond to their respective charged lepton. 11 However, in 1998, studies at the Super-Kamiokande led to a startling revelation. 12 The site itself is a massive neutrino detector located underground in Japan, which uses specialized detectors to see different types of neutrinos. 13 Due to their supposedly massless nature, they would not be affected by the Earth, so could arrive from the ground to the top, and the other way around. If they had no mass, then in theory the detections would be the same, even if the bottom-top neutrinos would have travelled a longer distance through the earth. In reality, there was a slight difference in behaviour between the oppositely moving particles on arrival. 14 This would turn out to be due to some
6 See NASA Science, ‘What is Dark Energy ? ’ 7 See CERN, ‘Matter - Antimatter Asymmetry Problem’ . 8 See Sciolla, 2006: 45-46. 9 See CDF Collaboration, 2022. 10 See CERN, ‘ Why do physicists mention “ 5 sigma ” ? ’
11 In order of mass, the electron, muon, and tau. 12 See Super-Kamiokande Collaboration, 1998. 13 See Super- Kamiokande, ‘Detector’ . 14 See Imperial College London, ‘Exploring beyond the known universe’, 26:56.
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