Fermilab Experiment Hints At Existence of Brand-New Elementary Particle

Thursday, November 4, 2010 - 10:20 in Physics & Chemistry

A fourth neutrino could help explain dark matter Physicists working with a Fermilab neutrino experiment may have found a new elementary particle whose behavior breaks the known laws of physics. If correct, their results poke holes in the accepted Standard Model of particles and forces, and raise some interesting questions for the Large Hadron Collider and Tevatron experiments. The new particle could even explain the existence of dark matter. Working with Fermilab's MiniBooNE experiment - the first part of the larger planned Booster Neutrino Experiment - physicists found evidence for a fourth flavor of neutrino, according to a new paper published in Physical Review Letters. This means there could be another particle we didn't know about, and that it behaves in a way physicists didn't expect. Neutrinos have been mystifying physicists since they were first theorized decades ago. They are one of the building blocks of matter, and to the best...

Read the whole article on PopSci

More from PopSci

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net