An international team of researchers announced Thursday findings in the subatomic world that, if proven accurate, could upset a basic set of laws that scientists use to describe the physical world. The potential change in thinking would force cosmologists to reconsider the origin, evolution and daily operation of the universe. The discovery involves the study tiny particles called muons. The data, generated at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, conflicts with previous measurements that explained the behavior of the subatomic particles.
Scientists consider muons the most basic of particles.
They are so tiny that they aren't made of smaller particles, yet they play an outsized role in shaping the physical world. The presence of electric and other fields, however, does give muons some dimension. A proton, on the other hand, is made up of smaller things called quarks. Brad Keister, director of the nuclear physics program at the National Science Foundation, said the finding, if it holds up, will change how cosmologists view the evolution of the universe back to and including the Big Bang, though this basic theory of how everything began would not necessarily be tossed out. The work, supported in part by the NSF, will also put researchers on the trail of new theories to explain missing matter in the universe, Keister said.