23/11/2019
In what could be a massive breakthrough in recent times, a team of physicists at the Institute for Nuclear Research, Hungary claim to have discovered evidence for the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature, in addition to the four that currently describe all of known Physics.
The team, led by Dr Attila Krasznahorkay studied the formation of electron-positron pairs in the decay of an excited Helium atom, and observed the splitting angle of the particles to be 115 degrees, an observation which could only be explained by assuming the "creation and subsequent decay" of a hitherto undiscovered particle. This new particle was christened X17 by the team, as it's mass was predicted to be around 17 MeV/c².
However, this is not the first time they have observed particle X17, rather their intention was to replicate and therefore validate similar observations from an experiment they carried out in 2016. At that time, electron-positron pairs produced in the decay of a Beryllium-8 isotope were observed to split at an unusual angle of 140 degrees. These results were published in Physical Review Letters.
Dr Jonathan Feng, affiliated to the University of California, Irvine has put forward a paper in which he claims that the observations of the Hungarian team point to the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature. He describes this force as being "photophobic" in nature. If proved, this discovery would lead to a "no-brainer" Nobel Prize in his opinion.
As of now, physicists around the world are attempting to replicate these results with a third type of atom, to conclusively prove the existence of Particle X-17. Until now, all of Physics was described using four fundamental forces, but if it is indeed proved that a fifth force exists, there is no guarantee there couldn't be a sixth or seventh or eighth such force.
References
1. https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459
Findings of the Hungarian team.
2. https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07411
Theory put forward by the UC Irvine team.
