The First Particle Physics Evidence of Physics Beyond the Standard Model? 97
StartsWithABang writes It's the holy grail of modern particle physics: discovering the first smoking-gun, direct evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model. Sure, there are unanswered questions and unsolved puzzles, ranging from dark matter to the hierarchy problem to the strong-CP problem, but there's no experimental result clubbing us over the head that can't be explained with standard particle physics. That is, the physics of the Standard Model in the framework of quantum field theory. Or is there? Take a look at the evidence from the muon's magnetic moment, and see what might be the future of physics.
Morgan_Feeeman_Says (Score:2, Funny)
I always figured the Standard Model was narrated by John Cleese, and the weird stuff was narrated by Ricky Gervais
Betteridge's Law (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Annoying header graphics (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Gravity? (Score:3, Funny)
Gravity is not outside the 'standard model'. The 'standard model' is mostly how we interpret the world with quantization and speed of light limit. The speed of light limit says that we can't observe ANYTHING---we can only measure fields. And quantization says that those fields are granularized into quanta (since if they weren't, energy could go infinite). That's pretty much all for the standard model.
From there, we can make precise measurements of field properties and see how those properties evolve (kind of like the game-of-life!). Persistent structures in that game-of-life we call ``particles'', the not-so-persistent structures (game of life often creates a LOT of completely random shapes), we call unstable particles, etc. And yes, some physicists went overboard with calling such noise `particles'---leading to hundreds of pointless classifications.
Gravity fits right in there... Except until recently, we were clueless as to how the gravity field functions (e.g. is it a ``particle'', or something more obscure...).