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Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

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Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#41

Post by spuz »

umeshunni wrote: post #37
sydthrowaway wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about black holes?

Black holes are made of regular matter not dark matter because they interact with electromagnetic waves.

Dark matter interacts with light in the same way as a black hole does. They both have mass and therefore both bend space (and light passing through that space) around them.

It's already known that what we call dark matter in some contexts (e.g. the mass that holds galaxies together) is at least partly made of black holes. We just don't know if black holes account for 100% or 1% of the dark matter that we believe exists in a typical galaxy.

Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#42

Post by spuz »

plaguepilled wrote: post #28

I am champing at the bit for more information about follow ups. Are verification trials planned? Who is doing them? When can we expect answers? Anyone in the know that can help me on this one?

I suspect these questions will be answered soon in an episode of PBS space time. Keep an eye out on their feed.

Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#43

Post by larsrc »

beezle wrote: post #21

I watched the CDF presentation early yesterday morning at the April APS meeting. Nothing to indicate they were anything but meticulous in their data analysis and modeling. Keep in mind the main change in CDF II is a great reduction in uncertainty - the central value is not much changed from the original CDF results many years ago. Tommaso Dorigo [1] covers a lot of the points where some of their assumptions/methods c…

I must say, those error bars are impressive.

Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#44

Post by guelo »

Recent related discussions

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Measurement of the W boson mass reveals 7σ deviation from calculations(https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781) 355 points|nvalis|6 days ago|151 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30955033

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Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#45

Post by ben_w »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #30
perihelions wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the parent is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...

"EM Drive" also probably counts.

From what I’ve been hearing, EM drive is more of “didn’t do the maths” followed by shoestring-budget “might as well try it, we have some spare lab space” work getting squished in between the serious projects.

Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#47

Post by ben_w »

Flankk wrote: post #31
matthewsmith2 wrote: post #29

Question from a noob. If the W Boson is heavier than we thought, could that explain dark matter?

I was wondering the same thing. Dark matter has never been observed. Its existence is based entirely on equations.

It has been observed, by its effect on other things, and in particular because this effect isn’t always the same. Most galaxies’ stars orbit at the wrong speed, but some behave as expected. Most galaxies gravitationally lens the background more than expected, but in some cases (colliding groups) something that doesn’t shine or reflect any EM radiation is causing lensing next to the galaxy while the galaxy itself is closer to what we expect without dark matter.

Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#48

Post by Jabbles »

matthewsmith2 wrote: post #29

Question from a noob. If the W Boson is heavier than we thought, could that explain dark matter?

Not really - the universe isn't full of W bosons that we've miscalculated the mass of. But it's possible that the new physics that is proposed to explain the mass discrepancy also provides an explanation of dark matter. I would say that's unlikely though.

Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#49

Post by madaxe_again »

sydthrowaway wrote: post #33
Flankk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering the same thing. Dark matter has never been observed. Its existence is based entirely on equations.

How about black holes?

They’ve been both predicted and observed. Dark matter is a conjectural solution for an anomaly in the rotational speed of galaxies across their discs. In my opinion, it’s almost certainly a bodge, and if the W boson has a different mass to that expected it could account for what we call dark matter, as the implications go far beyond just the additional mass - if the mass is off, then perhaps the nature of the weak force is misunderstood - for instance, perhaps the mass variance is driven by a hidden variable, and that in turn could account for what we regard as “dark” phenomena.

Re: Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

#50

Post by ngcc_hk »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

we'd have to change our understanding of how all the particles in the universe work. Well, remember the new paper? We're pretty much entering that worst case scenario. I believe you mean "best case"! There was much hue and cry after the Higgs discovery because the result, at least from the outside, seemed like "welp, we predicted a thing and found it and we don't have any new physics to disagree with; what a letdown!…

The great new is the past model does not work in some cases and we can now reduce it. Qm and R both does not refute all past science. Unlike the model we are the centre of universe and got 4 elements etc which is totally overruled.

The question we still do not have any after standard model. Whilst we have some big question similar to ultraviolet crazy (like today vaccuum space has so much energy the world has been gone in 10 power negative 30 sec) etc.

Still waiting.

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