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Science

Hungarian Scientists May Have Found a Fifth Force of Nature (cnn.com) 86

Posted by EditorDavid from the defying-gravity dept.
PolygamousRanchKid brings this news from CNN: Physics centers essentially on four forces that control our known, visible universe, governing everything from the production of heat in the sun to the way your laptop works. They are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong force.

New research may be leading us closer to one more.

Scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Atomki) have posted findings showing what could be an example of that fifth force at work. The scientists were closely watching how an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed. The particles split at an unusual angle -- 115 degrees -- which couldn't be explained by known physics. The study's lead scientist, Attila Krasznahorkay, told CNN that this was the second time his team had detected a new particle, which they call X17, because they calculated its mass at 17 megaelectronvolts. "X17 could be a particle, which connects our visible world with the dark matter," he said in an email.

Jonathan Feng, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Irvine told CNN he's been following the Hungarian team's work for years, and believes its research is shaping up to be a game changer. If these results can be replicated, "this would be a no-brainer Nobel Prize," he said... They're leading us closer to what's considered the Holy Grail in physics, which Albert Einstein had pursued but never achieved. Physicists hope to create a "unified field theory," which would coherently explain all cosmic forces from the formation of galaxies down to the quirks of quarks.
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Hungarian Scientists May Have Found a Fifth Force of Nature More

Hungarian Scientists May Have Found a Fifth Force of Nature

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  • Haven't named it yet. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @06:40PM (#59446866)

    From TFA :

    More sightings of the fifth force could lead to scientists settling on a specific name for it, ...

    I'm hoping for Umami [wikipedia.org]

  • Hungarian Academy of Sciences... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gyepi ( 891047 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @06:48PM (#59446880)
    ... no more, unfortunately. The fascist Orban regime just ripped the research institutes out from under the Hungarian Academy of Sciences three months ago. The livelihood of researchers, such as Attila Krasznahorkay, under a new umbrella organization with more direct political control, is now in a limbo. Thanks European Union, by the way, for letting this (and similar moves, such as kicking out Central European University from Budapest) happen without any sanctions.

    • Re:Hungarian Academy of Sciences... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by deviated_prevert ( 1146403 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @07:15PM (#59446944) Journal

      ... no more, unfortunately. The fascist Orban regime just ripped the research institutes out from under the Hungarian Academy of Sciences three months ago. The livelihood of researchers, such as Attila Krasznahorkay, under a new umbrella organization with more direct political control, is now in a limbo. Thanks European Union, by the way, for letting this (and similar moves, such as kicking out Central European University from Budapest) happen without any sanctions.

      Unfortunately the same shit can easily happen at any time in Canada and the US. [smithsonianmag.com] The anti science fascists are still active as hell here too, they spread fud everywhere and have had at times the political clout to get politicians to try to muzzle scientists.

      Fortunately most sane people who are not followers of the anti science right wing nut jobs currently in power in the US are starting to see behind the new Iron Curtain bullshit that is going on directed largely by Putin and his cronies.

      The fascists of today have no problem at all going to bed with organized crime so they are even more dangerous than their predecessors, Hitler and some fat moron in Rome who wound up upside down hanging from wires. The new force in the political universe does have a dark side, which inevitably will use science for evil and selfish anti social purposes and only science and free discourse can expose these assholes for what they are.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        They also routinely steal other people's ideas and reasoning breakthroughs, claiming them with the help of corrupt organisations. Ohh look they discovered what they were told was there based upon sound reasoning, it's their idea, yeah sure it is, lame arse fuckwits.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )

        Anti-science, you say? Did we forget Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's complaint, when she was called out for a particularly blatant misstating of statistics, about "people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right"? Link [warning, link goes to CBS, a network that covers for pedophiles [cbsnews.com]

        I think you have been watching too much left wing media. They seem to group people they don't like with racists and sexists to demonize political opponents. It is very

        • Anti-science, you say? Did we forget Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's complaint, when she was called out for a particularly blatant misstating of statistics, about "people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right"? Link [warning, link goes to CBS, a network that covers for pedophiles [cbsnews.com]

          I think you have been watching too much left wing media. They seem to group people they don't like with racists and sexists to demonize political opponents. It is very intellectually vile and I hope you can be free minded enough to see the truth.

          Glorifying objectivity in social justice debates can be really harmful for a number of different reasons.

          In her book Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins gives a brilliant explanation of how positivism Â- a school of thought that values objectivity and provable arguments Â- benefits white men the most. She also points out that black feminists and womanists have developed an alternative form of epistemology, or way of understanding knowledge, that she refers to as "black feminist thought."

          At risk of oversimplification, black feminist thought centers the lived experiences of marginalized people. It argues that subjectivity is valuable because people's lived experiences are valuable Â- because people's spoken truths are, in and of themselves, truths.

          And it argues against the idea that objectivity - which involves an emotional detachment from knowledge - is important in all academic fields.

          And this is an important perspective, particularly when exploring social justice.

          So, with the work of Patricia Hill Collins and others in mind, let's take a look at some of the reasons why glorifying objectivity in social justice debates can not only be counter-productive, but really oppressive.

          Link [everydayfeminism.com]

          Hey don't get your DNS in a BIND. Lighten up a little. The world is not about to end because a bunch of right wing assholes are manipulating scientists. There will always be an answer to our problems as a species. This ex-nazi scientist [youtube.com] explained how to save the world from any catastrophe long ago! Who knows you might even be chosen for the group to be saved especially if the ghost of Hillary and Bill comes back and is elected president and the prediction and bullshit out of Russia [reuters.com] and Trump comes true. [lowyinstitute.org]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Unfortunately the same shit can easily happen at any time in Canada and the US. The anti science fascists are still active as hell here too, they spread fud everywhere and have had at times the political clout to get politicians to try to muzzle scientists.

        Oh you think Harper was bad and 'muzzling climate scientists' and whatnot? Just wait until you find out that Trudeau's current government has been going after and muzzling scientists who've been publishing papers contrary to their agenda - like polar bears, and the actual impact of Canada on green house gases. And if you really, really think that this is some anti-science right wing nut job, you're out to goddamn lunch. Especially with the nu-left and the big anti-science agenda that they've been pushing

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @07:33PM (#59446980)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The people of Brazil fleeing to the USA right now might disagree with you about the fascism there. According to the roughly 500,000 immigrants to the USA who migrated in 2017, it's not a stable or safe political system or or economy for millions who flee the country.

        • According to the roughly 500,000 immigrants to the USA who migrated *in 2017*, it's not a stable or safe political system or or economy for millions who flee the country.

          In 2017. After the country had been run for 15 consecutive years by left-wing social-democrats. One year before the 2018 election when the supposed "fascists" [actually the center-right conservative party] got in. 2017. Somehow I don't believe it was "fascism" that was the reason behind the unstable and unsafe political situation and economic troubles that led to those immigrants fleeing their country.

          • Re:Hungarian Academy of Sciences... (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday November 24, 2019 @02:09PM (#59449022)

            That is interesting, but part of the problem is that people fled, by the millions, when the Fascists took over much like the Jewish flight from Germany and Austria in the 1930's. They felt endangered and likely to have their assets sized. Brazil was dominated by fascism back in the 1930's, which completely collapsed? And again in the 1960's with the Integralistas, whose government also completely collapsed. Do you think that the current round of highly nationalist and anti-Semitic fascists can erect a stable government? The last few times, I'm afraid those governments collapsed in disgrace. Brazil's swings from one extreme to another do not imply that either extreme is _stable_.

            And yes, I'm afraid that I just "Godwin'ed" the Brazilian government. But I'll plead that I described a real historical parallel.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by t0rkm3 ( 666910 )

              A lot of that collapse had to do with the withdrawal of leveraged financial assets, aka international banking. Brazil did recover and retained some of it's fascist ideas, like the country's people owning the minerals and the products of those minerals (PetroBras). The injection of money from international interests to capitalize on Petrobras resulted in running it into the ground.

              I'm mostly a libertarian, but there are things that people expect from their governments that both sides (D and R, I am USian) po

      • Re:Hungarian Academy of Sciences... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @08:43PM (#59447120)

        Hint: it's not defined as all forms of right-wing government that a modern snowflake would not like.

        He didn't say that it was. However: [merriam-webster.com]
        "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."

        Anyway. Orban is many things, but not a Fascist.

        Oh, please do tell me how he fails to meet any of those criteria. I'm breathless with anticipation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Megol ( 3135005 )

          That's a ridiculous definition but even so it proves the claim to be false. This is about a democratically elected leader following the rules of law. You may not like it but it's not a dictatorship and moving from "western" values to stronger nationalism and state control isn't fascism - otherwise we'd have to define most "western" countries before (let's say) the 70's as fascist.

      • But the rule of law has not been fatally undermined in Hungary,

        Oh, come on! They Orban has a friendly general attorney who isn't willing to investigate anything that would threaten Orban's power. Hungary and Poland just vetoed an EU motion that would tie the use of EU funds to proper rule of law. (Like joining the European Public Prosecutor's Office.)

    • Huh. That seems weird. Did they betray their educational mandate by engaging in radical political activism?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      As long as this doesn't go against human rights or the rules EU states have to follow why should the EU do anything?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by duketor ( 140373 )

      Too much pilpul in this thread to comment on it all. Leftists seem to really like bumper-stucker politics these days, with Maddow replacing Limbaugh, who seems more in tune with the zeitgeist. I mean, you chose the casino owner and beauty pageant owner as president (maybe not realizing he has been a deep cover FBI and military intel mole since 1981, but hey, Eastern European gangsters don't always think that far ahead, do they? Now they can't din rodef him without Israel or Ukraine being glassed).

      The more

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pbasch ( 1974106 )
      Here's what these Hungarian scientists should do: give credit for their discoveries, somehow, to glorious (if mythical) Magyar medieval military victories. Name the force after whatever legendary hero is favored right now. They'll get all the funding and freedom they want.

      Interesting compare and contrast: In Modi's nationalist India, there is a push to find evidence of high technology and science in ancient India. Read here: https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]

      Something I read years and years ago... I ca

  • Wasn't a discrepancy in momentum the first real proof of neutrinos? That didn't involve invoking a new force, just a new particle.

    Then again, both the weak and strong nuclear forces are relatively recent discoveries, through the lens of history. We could still have another one out there. The only thing magical about four forces is that they aesthetically match the four elements of antiquity, and adding a fifth force would be like adding a fifth element -- and we all remember how cringeworthy Captain Planet

    • Re:Reminiscent of neutrinos (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2019 @09:16PM (#59447176)

      Wasn't a discrepancy in momentum the first real proof of neutrinos? That didn't involve invoking a new force, just a new particle.

      Then again, both the weak and strong nuclear forces are relatively recent discoveries, through the lens of history. We could still have another one out there.

      Detecting a new particle is exactly what they are reporting:

      The study's lead scientist, Attila Krasznahorkay, told CNN that this was the second time his team had detected a new particle, which they call X17, because they calculated its mass at 17 megaelectronvolts.

      Bosons are particles that carry the electromagnetic (Photon) and weak nuclear force (W, and Z), which ironically are now unified and count as one instead of two forces, plus the strong nuclear force (Gluon)

      Gravity is the forth force and is the odd ball force where the math shows a carrier particles properties (graviton) but we haven't observed such a particle in nature yet.

      The fifth force is the Higgs field carried by the higgs boson

      You'll note in the paper that this X17 particles measured effects classify it as a boson, which would make it a force carrier particle.

      https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07411 [arxiv.org]

      So yes, you are correct what was discovered as a new particle, but it was discovered by the force it carries and the effect that force had on nuclear decay products, combined with how this particle would line up in the standard model, necessitates it to be a force carrier particle too.

  • More, FTFA:

    They referred to this unseen fifth force in action as a "protophobic force," meaning that it was as though the particles were "afraid of protons."

    "There's no reason to stop at the fifth," Feng said. "There could be a sixth, seventh, and eighth force."

    Most forces only go up to ten . . . but mine goes up to eleven!

    • Interesting...

      So wherever you have high concentrations of the protophobic force you might not find many atoms.

      Perhaps this force dominates the actual vast free space of nothingness between galaxies.

      An imbalance in the concentration of this force could force atoms to clump together and actually form galaxies.

      Then everything in between the galaxies would have a high concentration of the protophobic force that would continuously accelerate the galaxies apart causing the universe to keep expanding faster.

  • One sentence, particles fly away at a 115 degree angle... ... next thing we know, you're saying there is a new particle.

    You left out the bit in-between, which, you know, IS ONLY THE KEY OF THE ENTIRE STORY.

  • But yeah rumored fifth forces always seems to pop up every decade or so

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • When I was younger, it was magnetic monopoles (for which there is still no evidence) and the Higgs Boson. Note that the physical evidence for the Higgs Boson involves a *much* larger particle than the boson predicted by any related theory, and the theory is therefore incomplete and lacks the ability to predict new experimental results.

      • I remember monopoles as well. IIRC there were one or two never replicated events. Anyway It's always something that can be pitched to legislatures for funding. Remember the hype about the island of stability for high atomic number elements ? Higgs Boson I don't include in that. There had to be a particle responsible for mass. So either way looking for it works out well. If it was found you learn more about the 4 fundamental forces, if it doesn't exist there's something really really wrong with the basic mod

        • I'm looking at the NIH published documentation about Pradaxa at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] . As you point out, it does not need the frequent laboroty monitorihng of Warfarin. However, from that analyais, I see this lines.

          > no therapeutic agent has been accepted to reliably reverse the hemorrhagic complications of dabigatran. As of yet, there is no solid evidence to guide management of bleeding complications;

          So it's not risk free.

      • When I was younger, it was magnetic monopoles (for which there is still no evidence).

        And before that, polywater [wikipedia.org] was all the rage. Molecules of water stick together in macro structures, so that the water itself becomes more of a "goo" with interesting properties.

    • The real sad thing is that we had five forces until the electric and magnetic forces were combined. Now we have three forces as the electroweak force is a thing, so this is either a sixth or fourth force. I kind of look at it like the oceans. At one time when we could not visualize the entire world at once we thought there were multiple oceans. We know know there is one ocean and different geographic regions have different names. It is possible if not likely that there is one force and we are seeing differ

      • Well to be fair unification of the electric and the magnetic is not a consequence of being above an energy threshold. If you are a fan of GUTs they all unify at high enough energy.

      • Electroweak unification IIRC occurs at roughly 264 GEV where electric and magnetic unification is a consequence of Maxwell's equation and just the consequence of moving charges/changing fields.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Sure, but most of those are based on theoretical work and don't come with an actual observation of a particle. This one is in many ways the opposite situation. We have an actual observation first, now we need to characterize it and adjust theory.

  • Old news. (Score:4, Funny)

    by user32.ExitWindowsEx ( 250475 ) on Saturday November 23, 2019 @08:26PM (#59447088)

    CERN already found a fifth Force on April 1 2015.
    https://home.cern/news/news/ce... [home.cern]

    • Should've been May 4... What a waste...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guignol ( 159087 )
      But this one was a joke.
      We are talking about something very serious this time, though maybe there were a few translation issues, the announcement was concluded with "my nipples explode with delight" after all (we do understand the excitement of course, but...)
  • already have been observed?
  • Gravitational Waves entangle the soul with the Universe. Seems like they may have discovered the force that binds information entanglement. Neat. I and a few others discovered this phenomenon, but I'm uneducated so it hasn't got much traction. The result of observation of many coincidences results in peak weird or just weird to those that don't experience synchronicity. the Dictator (of free speech)

  • Multipass!

  • An expert in the field is pouring cold water on the paper, saying it's badly written and the modelling is defective. https://www.science20.com/tomm... [science20.com]

  • History of this research group (Score:3)

    by As_I_Please ( 471684 ) on Sunday November 24, 2019 @08:18PM (#59450010)

    This group has an odd history when it comes to particle discoveries. From 2016: https://www.quantamagazine.org... [quantamagazine.org]

  • Try hard enough to find a unified theory and you will succeed in finding yet another theory for others to try unify with all there already is.

  • It's called your mom!

    Oh wait, sorry, that's just gravity.

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