Muon g-2 Results Signify New Physics? Maybe Not.

The big news of the week that got all the media coverage is the result that came out of Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment that confirmed an earlier result from Brookhaven more than a dozen years ago. Fermilab even announced it like.

However, as with any scientific discovery or announcement, one has to take a deep breath and let the process works itself out before we put our stamp of validity to it. This is because there is a theoretical calculation that has also been published along with this result that basically recalculates what the Standard Model predicts as the magnetic moment of a muon, and they found that the new calculation produces a result consistent with the experiment. In other words, there is no new physics if this calculation is verified, because the old Standard Model does, in fact, predicted this new result.

One of the major difficulties in physics is that in many situations, we do not have a simple equation that we can plug-and-chug to get numbers out. In fact, this is why predicting the weather is difficult, because the non-linear differential equations that need to be solved to get the number out can only be done numerically, i.e. it has to be done via some numerical algorithm.

This is made worse when there are a gazillion interactions involved in a system. So one ends up making simplifying models or adopt calculational techniques to allow us to get to some numerical answers. We benchmark the technique to known values and known systems to make sure that it gives accurate and sensible answers, but as we push the boundary even more, there is no guarantee that that calculational technique will work all the time.

The author of the theoretical paper used a calculational technique called lattice QCD. This is a known calculational model that has been described in simple terms in the link I provided above. It appears that using this method, the Standard Model does provide a value for the muon magnetic moment that is consistent with the experiment. If this is true, then it means that the old calculation of the magnetic moment was incorrect in the first place, and that there is discrepancy between what the Standard model predicts, and what the experiment measures.

While this is good news for the Standard Model and is another evidences of why it is an amazing theory, those who are looking for new physics beyond the Standard Model will obviously not be jumping for joy. But that isn't the issue here and not what I want to highlight. Rather, it is the constant reminder that in science, and especially in such exotic areas of physics, every discovery or new ideas must not be overblown or overhyped, because those require multiple verification over a period of time. It is not a situation for instant gratification. A lot of hard work is still to come because we have seen way too many times where something that was touted turned out to not be valid.

This announcement received a lot of media coverage. I just hope that this is a valid "new physics" and not just something that turned out to be what the old theory did predict.

Zz.

How Beauty Leads Physics Astray

Sabine Hossenfelder is probably doing a "book tour", since this talk certainly addressed many points that she brought up in her book.



As I've said many times on here, I don't disagree with many things that she brought up. I find the trend of foundational physics to even think about discarding experimental verification to be very troubling. I'm just glad that the field that I'm in is still strongly experimental.

Zz.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Chad Orzel has posted a fun piece that really tries to clarified all the brouhaha in many circles about a "crisis" that many are presuming to be widespread. The crisis in question is the lack of "beyond the standard model" discovery in elementary particle physics, and the issue that many elementary particle theorists seem to think that a theory that is based on solid foundation and elegance are sufficient to be taken seriously.

I find this very frustrating, because physics as a whole is not in crisis. The "crisis" being described is real, but it affects only the subset of physics that deals with fundamental particles and fields, particularly on the theory side. (Experimental physicists in those areas aren't making dramatic discoveries, but they are generating data and pushing their experiments forward, so they're a little happier than their theoretical colleagues...)

The problems of theoretical high energy physics, though, do not greatly afflict physicists working in much of the rest of the discipline. While this might be a time of crisis for particle theorists, it's arguably never been a better time to be a physicist in most of the rest of the field. There are exciting discoveries being made, and new technologies pushing the frontiers of physics forward in a wide range of subfields.

This is a common frustration, because elementary particle physics is not even the biggest subfield of physics (condensed matter physics is), but yet, it makes a lot of noise, and the media+public seem to pay more attention to such noises. So whenever something rocks this field, people often tend to think that this permeates through the entire field of physics. This is utterly false!

Orzel has listed several outstanding and amazing discoveries and advancements in condensed matter. There are more! The study of topological insulators continues to be extremely hot and appear to be not only interesting for application, but also as a "playground" for exotic quantum field theory scenarios.

I've said it many times, and I'll say it again. Physics isn't just the Higgs or the LHC. It is also your iphone, your MRI, your WiFi, your CT scan, etc....etc.

Zz.

Rumors Emerge Following Prominent Physicist's Death

First of all, RIP Shoucheng Zhang.

It is unfortunate that my first post of the New Year is about a sad news from Dec. of 2018. Prominent Standford physicist, Shoucheng Zhang passed away in early Dec. of an apparent suicide. He was only 55, and according to his family, has been suffering from bouts of depression. But what triggers this report is the possible connection between him and US-China relation, which, btw, is purely a rumor right now.

Zhang was originally recruited in 2008 under the Thousand Talents program — a CCP effort to attract top scientists from overseas to work in China — to conduct research at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Zhang was active in helping U.S.-trained Chinese researchers return home, and expressed his desire to help “bring back the front-lines of research to China” in a recent interview with Chinese news portal Sina.  

Zhang’s venture capital firm Digital Horizon Capital (DHVC), formerly known as Danhua Capital, was recently linked to China’s “Made in China 2025” technology dominance program in a Nov. 30 U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) report. According to the report, venture capital firms like DHVC are ultimately aimed at allowing China to access vital technology from U.S. startups. Zhang’s firm lists 113 U.S. companies in its portfolio, most falling within emerging sectors that the Chinese government has identified as strategic priorities. 

The “Made in China 2025” program combines economic espionage and aggressive business acquisitions to aid China’s quest to become a tech manufacturing superpower, the USTR report continues. The program was launched in 2015 and has been cited by the Trump administration as evidence that the Chinese government is engaged in a strategic effort to steal American technological expertise. 

I have absolutely no knowledge on any of these. I can only mourn the brilliant mind that we have lost.

I first heard of "S.C. Zhang" when I was still working as a grad student in condensed matter physics, especially on the high-Tc superconductors. He published this paper in Science, authored by him alone, on the SO5 symmetry for the basis of a unified theory of superconductivity and antiferromagntism[1]. That publication created quite a shakeup in condensed matter theory world at that time.

It was a bit later that I learned that he came out of an expertise in elementary particle physics, and switched fields to go dabble into condensed matter (see, kids? I told you that various topics in physics are connected and interrelated!). Of course, his latest ground-breaking work was the initial proposal for topological insulators[2]. This was Nobel Prize-caliber work, in my opinion.

Besides that, I've often cited one of his writings when the issue of emergent phenomena comes up.[3] As someone with a training in high energy/elementary particle, he definitely had the expertise to talk about both sides of the coin: reductionism versus emergent phenomenon.

Whatever the circumstances are surrounding his death, we have lost a brilliant physicist. If topological insulators become the rich playground for physicists and engineers in the years to come, as it is expected to, I hope the world remembers his name as someone who was responsible for this advancement.

Zz.

[1] S.C. Zhang, Science v.275, p.1089 (1997).
[2] H. Zhang et al., Nature Physics v.5, p.438 (2009).
[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0210162

The Quantum Form of General Relativity's Equivalence Principle?

This is an interesting approach to one of the dilemma being faced in physics, which is trying to reconcile General Relativity, or gravity in particular, with the quantum mechanical picture. We have had String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity, etc. going through this effort. But in this paper that just got published in Nature[1], the authors tackled it in a different way, by examining the Einstein's equivalence principle and formulating the QM's version of it, which is different than the classical version.

The ArXiv version of the paper can be found here. However, I have not verified if it is identical to the published version. The ArXiv manuscript was submitted in 2015, while the version in Nature Physics has only been published recently (2018). There doesn't appear to be any updates to this version since its submission to ArXiv.

The best part about this is that the predictions are testable (gives dirty look at String Theory).

I'll let you explore this and see what you think.

Zz.

[1] Magdalena Zych, Caslav Brukner, Nature Physics, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-018-0197-6

Loop Quantum Gravity

This is one of those still-unverified theory that tries to reconcile quantum mechanics with General Relativity. I'm not in this field, so I have no expertise in it. But I know that for many people who have read about it, they are aware of String theory and it's competition, Loop Quantum Gravity.

In this video, Fermilab's Don Lincoln tries to explain LQG to the masses.



Keep in mind that this idea is still lacking in experimental support. The gamma ray burst observation that he mentioned in the video has been highlighted here quite a while back.

Without experimental verification, both String theory and LQG continue to have issues with their credibility as a science.

Zz.

Multiverse

In this article, Ethan Siegel valiantly tried to explain, in simple language, what "multiverse" is within the astrophysical/cosmological context:

Inflation doesn't end everywhere at once, but rather in select, disconnected locations at any given time, while the space between those locations continues to inflate. There should be multiple, enormous regions of space where inflation ends and a hot Big Bang begins, but they can never encounter one another, as they're separated by regions of inflating space. Wherever inflation begins, it is all but guaranteed to continue for an eternity, at least in places.

Where inflation ends for us, we get a hot Big Bang. The part of the Universe we observe is just one part of this region where inflation ended, with more unobservable Universe beyond that. But there are countlessly many regions, all disconnected from one another, with the same exact story.

Unfortunately, as is the problem with String theory, none of these have testable prediction that can push it out of the realm of speculation and into being a true science.

Zz.

The Most Significant Genius

No, not Einstein, or Feynman, or Newton. Fermilab's Don Lincoln celebrates the hugely-important contribution of Emmy Noether.



I have highlighted this genius previously, especially in connection to her insight relating symmetry to conservation laws (read here, here, and here).

Zz.

Is Theoretical Physics Wasting Our Best Minds?

Before you continue reading this, let me be very clear right off the bat that there are TWO separate issues here that I will be discussing, and they are thinly connected simply by the over-general reference of "theoretical physics" made by the author of the article that I will be citing.

In this Forbes article, Ethan Siegel highlights the main point made by Sabine Hossenfelder in her book "Lost In Math". Siegel not only pointed this out, but also did an in-depth description leading up to the "naturalness" philosophy that is prevalent in the esoteric fields of physics such as string, etc.

If you are a theoretical particle physicist, a string theorist, or a phenomenologist — particularly if you suffer from cognitive dissonance — you will not like this book. If you are a true believer in naturalness as the guiding light of theoretical physics, this book will irritate you tremendously. But if you're someone who isn't afraid to ask that big question of "are we doing it all wrong," the answer might be a big, uncomfortable "yes." Those of us who are intellectually honest physicists have been living with this discomfort for many decades now. In Sabine's book, Lost In Math, this discomfort is now made accessible to the rest of us.

Certainly this is thought-provoking, and it isn't something I disagree about. For science to give up on empirical evidence, and simply pursue something that looks "natural" or "beautiful" is dangerous and verging on being a religion. So my feelings are consistent with what has been said in the article.

Now comes the other part of the issue. It has always been my pet peeve when someone over-generalize physics as being predominantly being "high-energy physics, astrophysics, string theory, etc...", i.e. the esoteric fields of study. In this case, "theoretical physics" certainly is NOT dominated by those fields. There are theoretical studies in condensed matter physics, atomic/molecular physics, medical physics, accelerator physics, etc... etc., i.e. fields of studies that are certainly not esoteric, have lots of practical applications, etc.

In fact, I would argue that the esoteric fields of physics represents the MINORITY in terms of the number of practicing physicists that we have around the world. As a zeroth-order approximation of this claim, I decided to look at the members of the APS. The APS Divisions correspond to the number of members who declared themselves to be in a certain field within physics. Note that not all members made the declaration, and it is also not uncommon for a member to declare more than one division.

First of all, 79% of APS members are accounted for in this chart for the 2018 membership. Now, what is the percentage of members within the so-called esoteric fields of Astrophysics, Gravitation, and Particles and Fields? 14.9%. Even if you include Nuclear Physics into this, it will come up to 19.8%

Now, forget about theoretical or experimental. Can 19.8% represents ALL of physics? The fields of studies that a lot of people associate physics with are done by ONLY 19.8% of physicists! Using them, one will get a severely inaccurate representation of physics and physicists.

In fact, if you look at the fields more commonly associated with the physics of materials (condensed matter physics and Materials Physics), we get 18.2%, almost as big as Astrophysics, Gravitation, Particles and Fields, and Nuclear Physics combined! Condensed matter physics alone dwarfs other fields, being almost twice as big as the next division, which is Particles and Fields.

But what is more important here is that outside of the 19.8% of physicists in these esoteric fields, an overwhelming percentage of physicists (59.2%) are in fields of studies that are associated with practical applications of physics. So if you were to bump randomly into a physicist, chances are, you will find someone who works in a field related to something of practical importance and NOT a high-energy physicist, a nuclear physicist, etc.

This is my round-about way of complaining that Ethan Siegel article should not be a damnation of "theoretical physics" in general, because the overwhelming percentage of theoretical physics is NOT about these esoteric topics that have been mentioned in his article. Rather, theories in other parts of physics rely very heavily on empirical observations and verification, i.e. the good and tested way of doing science. In those areas, we are definitely NOT wasting our best minds!

A while back, I said that physics is not just the LHC. It is also your iPhone. Even that requires modification. We should say that physics is predominantly your iPhone, with only a smidgen of LHC added as garnishing. That is a more accurate representation of the field as a whole.

Zz.

Noether Theorem And Symmetries

This is not something new that I'm highlighting on this blog. I've mentioned a link to Emmy Noether theorem before in this post, and also highlighted a history of her work here. However, I think that there is no such thing as too much publicity on Emmy Noether, because she deserves to be remembered and admired through eternity for her accomplishments and insights.

This video tries to explain the significance of her work connecting conservation laws with symmetry principles.



However, I think that if I were a layperson, I'd miss the important point in this video. So here is the takeaway message if you want one:

Everything that we see and every behavior of our universe can be traced to some conservation laws. Each conservation law is a manifestation of some underlying symmetry of our universe.

This is the insight, and a very important insight, that Noether brought to the table, and it was revolutionary to physics. These symmetries are what we currently have as the most fundamental description of the universe that we live in.

Watch this video, and read the links that I gave above, several times if you must, because you owe it to yourself to know about this person and her immense effect on our understanding of our world.

Zz.

Dark Energy Levels Not Too Constrained For Star Formation

I've always had a bit of a problem with the anthropic scenario of our universe, i.e. the idea that we are living in a universe JUST fined-tuned to allow us to exist. My problem isn't with the observations so far, but rather how much people are already thinking that this must be true, the data are set, and that we can run away with it. Certainly many people outside of cosmology have tried to spin this into whatever directions that they want.

So when news like this comes along, I just want to yell "I told you so!". It is not that I agree or disagree with the conclusion, but it is to point out that in our attempt to understand all of this, our knowledge is still in its infancy, and that we really don't know enough yet to be able to say things one way or the other on many of the big issues. We do have a fuzzy idea on what direction it is going, but in a number of things and observations, more is required to understand things even better.

The new studies ran the simulation on the star formation of our universe against the amount of dark energy in our universe. They can, to put it crudely, dial in various level of dark energy in their simulations. They found that there is a wider range than initially expected for our present universe to form, i.e. it is not in a very narrow range that was thought of. So keeping everything relatively the same, we could see this present universe that we're in for a large range of dark energy.

The simulations allowed the researchers to adjust the amount of dark energy in the universe and watch what happened.

The results were a surprise. The research revealed that the amount of dark energy could be increased a couple of hundred times – or reduced equally drastically – without substantially affecting anything else.

So for dark energy, the parameter is not as "fine tuned" as one expected.

Zz.

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mnras/sty846/4963750?redirectedFrom=fulltext

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mnras/sty879/4966995?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Alternative Theories of Gravity In Deep Doo-Doo

This is a rather nice article on the troubled times facing many alternative theories to Einstein's General Relativity due to the recent results from the colliding neutron stars. It should be especially useful to laymen to read and understand the methodology and the scrutiny that every theory goes through in physics to be considered to be valid. The one "take-home-lesson" that you should see is that my often-repeated manta here is more true than ever:

"Physics just doesn't say what goes up, must come down. It must also say when and where it comes down" - Warren Siegel.

The quantitative aspect is what is able to separate theories from being wrong to being right. One can't just say "oh, gravity gets weaker as we go farther away". It must say how much weaker, how it behaves with distance, etc.. etc.. and make precise predictions (i.e. to what level of uncertainty). These are "numbers" that we can compare with experiments, if there are already results or if new ones are collected.

This was exactly what happened with the merging neutron stars result, where our verification of the speed of gravity matches that to such precision with the speed of light, that a number of alternative gravitational theories died instantly.

The moral of the story here is that you should not fall in such deep love with any theory yet to have substantial verification, and you should not jump too quickly when new theories appear. I still point out to the OPERA debacle a few years ago when the OPERA project thought they measured superluminal neutrinos. As soon as they published their results, a bunch of theoretical explanations appeared on the e-print arXiv website, proposing theories of superluminal neutrinos, without waiting for independent verification of the validity of the result.

Not surprisingly, they all died of a horrible death when the result was attributed to bad optical cable connection! The history of physics is littered with theories that died and disappeared into obscurity when they could not match the experimental results or observations. Any beliefs or ideology, no matter how beautiful, satisfying, or popular, will crumble at the hands of Mother Nature if she says so.

Zz.

Hawking's Final Paper Is Published

The late Stephen Hawking's final paper written while he was alive, has been published. You can get the full version of it at that link.

If you missed it, read Ethan Siegel's earlier explanation of the paper.

Zz.

An Astrophysicist Describes Stephen Hawking's Last Paper

The astrophysicist in this case is, of course, Ethan Siegel, who I've cited here a few times.

In this article, he describes what Hawking's last paper is all about, if you want simple description of it. The link to the preprint (we'll update this post if and when it is published) is also given if you don't have it already.

Here is, in a nutshell, what they do. They create a (deformed) conformal field theory that is mathematically equivalent (or dual) to an eternally inflating spacetime, and investigate some mathematical properties of that field theory. They look, in particular, at where the border of a spacetime that inflates for an eternity (forward in time) versus one that doesn't, and choose that as the interesting problem to consider. They then look at the geometries that arise from this field theory, try to map that back onto our physically inflating Universe, and draw a conclusion from that. Based on what they find, they contend that the exit from inflation doesn't give you something eternally inflating into the future, with disconnected pockets where hot Big Bangs occur, but rather that the exit is finite and smooth. In other words, it gives you a single Universe, not a series of disconnected Universes embedded in a larger multiverse.

There! Do you even need to read the actual paper after that?

😁

BTW, let's also give some love to his co-author, Thomas Hertog, who seems to be left out in many of this discussion and news articles.

Zz.

Seeing Anyons With STM?

This is a very intriguing theoretical paper that proposes the detection of anyon using STM (you get free access to the actual paper from the website). The detection involves the measurement of the local density of states (LDOS), and then counting the resonance "rings". This is shown in Fig. 1 and 2 of the paper.[1]

This is quite a fascinating idea, because to get these fractional effects, one has to have a 2D confinement of the charges involved.

Now it becomes a race in seeing who might be able to produce such an experiment to detect these rings. STMs are pretty common, but it is now a matter of having the suitable material to see this.

Zz.


[1] Z. Papic et. al. PRX v.8, 011037 (2018).

Gravity As A Result Of Random Quantum Fluctuation?

There are too many "buzzwords" in this entire thing, but it might still be an interesting reading for some people.

There is a new report on the possibility that gravity might not be an interaction within QFT framework, but rather as a result of quantum fluctuation.

The average of these fluctuations is a gravitational field that is consistent with Newton’s theory of gravity. In this model, gravity is born out of quantum mechanics, but is not in itself a quantum-mechanical force. It is what scientists call “semiclassical.” Until this theory is tested further, it will remain a semi-solution; while the idea does predict certain known phenomena, it doesn’t yet account for Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

This latest report is due to a preprint uploaded to ArXiv.

Now, I can understand New Scientist reporting on something like this, because they have the tendency to report on sensational and unverified science news, but for PBS/NOVA webpage to jump onto this still-unpublished work? That's surprising.

Of course, I'm complicit on this as well since I'm reporting it here. I'm going to make sure I won't highlight something like this again in the future until it has at least appear in a peer-reviewed publication, not just in New Scientist and the likes.

Zz.

The Higgs - Five Years In

In case you've been asleep the past 5 years or so and what to catch up on our lovable Higgs, here is a quick, condensed version of the saga so far.

Where were you on 4 July 2012, the day the Higgs boson discovery was announced? Many people will be able to answer without referring to their diary. Perhaps you were among the few who had managed to secure a seat in CERN’s main auditorium, or who joined colleagues in universities and laboratories around the world to watch the webcast.

This story promises to have lots of sequels, just like the movies released so far this year.

Zz.

Host Interrupts Female Physicst Too Much, Audience Member Intervened

Hey, good for her!

The moderator of this panel interrupted physicist Veronika Hubeny of UC-Davis so much that audience member Marilee Talkington (appropriate name) got so frustrated that she intervened.

While watching a panel titled “Pondering the Imponderable: The Biggest Questions of Cosmology,” Marilee Talkington noticed that the moderator wasn’t giving physicist Veronika Hubeny, a professor at UC Davis and the only female on the panel, her fair share of speaking time.

So when the moderator, New Yorker contributor Jim Holt, finally asked Hubeny a question about her research in string theory and quantum gravity, then immediately began speaking over her to explain it himself, Talkington was furious.

Fed up with the continuous mansplaining, Talkington interrupted Holt by yelling loudly, “Let her speak, please!” The crowd applauded the request. 

You can read the rest of the story here.

Certainly, while it is awfully annoying, based on what Dr. Hubeny described, she didn't think it was a blatant sexism. Rather, she thought that the host was just overly enthusiastic. But you may judge that for yourself if the host didn't give the only female member of the panel a chance to speak.

But yeah, good for Ms. Talkington for intervening.

Zz.

Testing For The Unruh Effect

A new paper that is to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. is already getting quite a bit of advanced publicity. In it, the authors proposed a rather simple way to test for the existence of the long-proposed Unruh effect.

Things get even weirder if one observer accelerates. Any observer traveling at a constant speed will measure the temperature of empty space as absolute zero. But an accelerated observer will find the vacuum hotter. At least that's what William Unruh, a theorist at the University British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, argued in 1976. To a nonaccelerating observer, the vacuum is devoid of particles—so that if he holds a particle detector it will register no clicks. In contrast, Unruh argued, an accelerated observer will detect a fog of photons and other particles, as the number of quantum particles flitting about depends on an observer's motion. The greater the acceleration, the higher the temperature of that fog or "bath."

So obviously, this is a very difficult effect to detect, which explains why we haven't had any evidence for it since it was first proposed in 1976. That is why this new paper is causing heads to turn, because the authors are proposing a test using our existing technology. You may read the two links above to see what they are proposing using our current particle accelerators.

But what is a bit amusing is that there are already skeptics about this methodology of testing, but each camp is arguing it for different reasons.

Skeptics say the experiment won’t work, but they disagree on why. If the situation isproperly analyzed, there is no fog of photons in the accelerated frame, says Detlev Buchholz, a theorist at the University of Göttingen in Germany. "The Unruh gas does not exist!" he says. Nevertheless, Buchholz says, the vacuum will appear hot to an accelerated observer, but because of a kind of friction that arises through the interplay of quantum uncertainty and acceleration. So,the experiment might show the desired effect, but that wouldn't reveal the supposed fog of photons in the accelerating frame.

In contrast, Robert O'Connell, a theorist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, insists that in the accelerated frame there is a fog of photons. However, he contends, it is not possible to draw energy out of that fog to produce extra radiation in the lab frame. O'Connell cites a basic bit of physics called the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, which states that a particle interacting with a heat bath will pump as much energy into the bath as it pulls out. Thus, he argues, Unruh's fog of photons exists, but the experiment should not produce the supposed signal anyway.

If there's one thing that experimenters like, it is to prove theorists wrong! :) So which ever way an experiment on this turns out, it will bound to disprove one group of theorists or another. It's a win-win situation! :)

Zz.

Will SMASH Be A Smash?

Here comes a new extension to the Standard Model!

A new theoretical paper in PRL has extended the Standard Model of elementary particles to include new particles, and tries to mash different ideas and theories into this new standard model called SMASH - Standard Model Axion See-saw Higgs portal inflation (yeah, it's a mouthful).

SMASH adds six new particles to the seventeen fundamental particles of the standard model. The particles are three heavy right-handed neutrinos, a color triplet fermion, a particle called rho that both gives mass to the right-handed neutrinos and drives cosmic inflation together with the Higgs boson, and an axion, which is a promising dark matter candidate. With these six particles, SMASH does five things: produces the matter–antimatter imbalance in the Universe; creates the mysterious tiny masses of the known left-handed neutrinos; explains an unusual symmetry of the strong interaction that binds quarks in nuclei; accounts for the origin of dark matter; and explains inflation.

Of course, with ANY theoretical ideas, which often has long gestation period, a lot of patient waiting and testing will have to be done to verify many of its predictions. But this seems to create quite an excitement in revamping the Standard Model.

Zz.