Physicists believe that an unknown force could be acting on sub-atomic particles known as muons.
      • @Knusper@feddit.de
        5•2 years ago

        Well, the article currently lists them as: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force.

        If you’re not familiar, you wouldn’t be able to guess that the last two are nuclear forces and in the context of a new force, that list is rather confusing.

    • 133arc585
      38•2 years ago
      1. Strong nuclear force: holds the nucleus of an atom together
      2. Weak nuclear force: responsible for radioactive decay
      3. Electromagnetic force: of charged particles
      4. Gravitational force: attractive force between objects with mass
      • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        6•2 years ago

        Not all decays are weak-based, though, and not all weak phenomina are directly related to radioactivity. That’s just the only thing a layman has heard of where it’s relevant.

        The strong force only holds atoms together through a sort of trickle-down force, too, but that one feels like splitting hairs.

        • 133arc585
          20•2 years ago

          The person I replied to wasn’t able to name the forces beyond gravity, so I think over-simplification and reduction to specific phenomena they would have heard of is appropriate.

          • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
            4•2 years ago

            Oh, absolutely. I was adding on for anyone else reading who might appreciate answer gravy. Sorry if it came across as critical of what you wrote, my bad.

  • @Ashyr@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8•2 years ago

    Interesting. I never expected a fifth. If anything, I’ve seen a push for reducing the number down to three (gravity, strong and electro-weak) or possibly just two.

  • palordrolap
    20•2 years ago

    What are the odds that muons are more sensitive to neutrino interaction and this is what the scientists are seeing? Muons are pretty massive, after all, and neutrinos are literally everywhere. Obligatory: “billions of neutrinos pass through you every second”.

    Muons are leptons like neutrinos and their electron cousins, and we already know that electrons can be boosted by the occasional neutrino interaction. A free muon in a magnetic field has nowhere to be boosted to, so, coupled with a hypothetically higher chance of interacting with a neutrino, I’d expect something to happen when it does, though not exactly what.

    I figure we don’t already use muons in neutrino detectors because they don’t last very long (about a second) before decaying, and the only way to get them to last longer is to accelerate them to a decent fraction of the speed of light. That way, from our reference frame they can last minutes or more. That’s going to be energy-hungry compared to the passive detectors we have.

    i.e. the passive detectors which take advantage of the aforementioned electron / atom interaction.