Particle Physics' Most Famous Anomaly (almost) Solved

Three years ago, there was a frenzy over an experiment at Fermilab that confirmed anomaly of the muon - a fundamental particle in the standard model. Since then, physicists have debated whether the theory needs to be revised or whether there is something wrong with the calculation. A new paper now says it's neither.

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#science #sciencenews #physics

[benjaminshropshire]

As a software developer, when I hear of this sort of "we found the bug 6 steps back" kind of problem, I start wanting to see the "build graph" for all of physics. It would be an interesting project to try to aggregate all the calculations everything is built on in a form that would allow researchers to re-run them, either in their original form (giving access to all the intermediate values) or in modified form (simplifying checks of how changes in fundamental assumption alter other things).

[carlbrenninkmeijer]

Well, they opened a can of Pions, you mean ?

[gregallen]

What always made me slightly uncertain/dubious (beyond never having been a physicist nor able to do the math myself ;) about this experiment was, while it was conducted in two different places, Brookhaven and Fermi labs, it was done on the same piece of equipment which was shipped from Brookhaven to Fermi labs. I'm sure that was top on the experimental physicists' minds but wouldn't this cut into the 5 sigma level of certainty?

[jimsvideos]

Muon, not to be confused with a spherical cow in a vacuum which is a moo-on.

[thebooksthelibrarian]

For Sabines relativity course on Brilliant: make sure your math is fresh, although a good basis at high school is sufficent (I mean: the schooling from 16 till 18 years, so not higher eduction). However, you have to know how to multiply matrices.
Also: after you've done a lesson, study it. You have to grasp it well enough to be able to do the next one. In the beginning it will work out, but especially the later lessons of the course will become hard if you don't know enough of the first ones.
Except for that, I would like to see that in a book.

[MCsCreations]

Well, I can only hope this paper was published on 3/14.
Thanks, Sabine! 😊
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[alieninmybeverage]

I have often wondered if one or some combination of the consensus rules of mathematics might begin to introduce noise at these levels of precision. The reason being the difference between proving something is necessarily the case and proving something is necessary for "well-functioning" use of further mathematical approximation.

[DigitalRackGear]

You are an amazing presenter who can breathe life for the 'every-day person' into a highly complex and specialised area. Well done Sabine.

[pez]

1:13 we engineers be like: that's literaly the same number!!!

[LouisEmery]

2:04 Funny, I personally know one of the authors right in the middle of the block. He's a geodesist (handles alignment of the instrument). "7" means Fermilab, I assume.

[CANomad]

Im half way through your book "existential physics" and I'm loving it. Its a nice change up from reading books written buy people who lived 1500 years and ruled roman empires haha. Also, my anxiety has decreased. Its amazing what a little extra understanding of the big picture does for the restless troubled mind.

[jayspell]

I love your channel! Your presentation style is charming, and your accent is addictive to what little hearing I still have. Sabine, you have really brightened my days, since I became disabled.

[qswaefrdthzg]

The problem has been solved for a while, it's called lattice QFT, because it actually works with proper QFT and not just scattering approximations (of course both are perturbative)

[eyu]

I truly enjoy catching up with science news from your channel.👍🤠

[johnkeck]

It's no coincidence that the problem is PI-ons making the calculation only aROUND the experimental finding.

[Thomas-gk]

My modest physics knowledge literally grew up with this. Is there a calculation for the decay of twitter discussions, too? Navier-Stokes?

[sub-critical-fomf]

Maybe there was some editing to condense this video as there seems to be a confusion between the lattice calculation and the data driven estimate where the video makes it sound like these are both steps in one calculation to get the theory prediction. Instead these are two different methods for obtaining theory predictions in the standard model. The data driven prediction gives this very large ( now ~ 5 sigma) deviation from the experimentally measured value, while the lattice result which is fairly new (2020) is closer to the measured value. Since it was the first time a lattice calculation had been carried out at this level of precision the first step was to get comparisons from other lattice collaborations. This happened even more recently so it really looks like there is a tension between lattice and data driven estimates. The new paper is comparing a particular part of that calculation in the data driven method to the same part of the calculation from the lattice method and that has led them to identify a particular contribution as a likely cause of the discrepancy between the data driven method and the lattice result.

[hannomzt]

2:22 does not show the prediction vs the observation. It shows the data-driven result from the new paper vs the previous results obtained from lattice QCD.

[orthoplex]

I wonder if they have tried redoing the calculation over and over with inputs that are slightly different but still within the measurement confidence intervals from experiments

[meenki]

It's very easy to solve this problem with a simple new partical, a mewon would fit perfectly.