the large hadron collider has been lying
dormant since 2018. the 27 kilometer
long loop under the ground near geneva
switzerland where protons and electrons
are smashed together at warp speed has
been ground zero for some of the most
extraordinary discoveries in particle
physics discoveries that have been key
to backing up theories about the
fundamental building blocks of our
universe
scientists and engineers have been
upgrading the tech at the collider in
the hopes that they can find new answers
to a question that has confounded them
for years
what they end up finding could either
help sew together a unified
understanding of our universe
or tear it apart into a tattered mess of
meaningless chaos
welcome back to fact nominal today we're
exploring why the standard model of
particle physics might be broken
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the standard model of particle physics
goes like this all the matter in the
universe is made up of particles these
particles come in two basic types quarks
and leptons
there are six different quarks and six
different leptons
both quarks and leptons are arranged in
pairs that range from light and stable
to heavier and less stable in addition
to quarks and leptons there are four
forces gravity electromagnetism the
strong nuclear force and the weak
nuclear force electromagnetism and the
strong and weak nuclear forces are the
result of exchanges between force
carrier particles which are kind of like
messages exchanged between other
particles
these include photons gluons and the z
and w bosons
the strong nuclear force which binds
matter together is carried by gluons
the weak nuclear force which describes
the radioactive decay of atoms is
carried by the znw bosons an
electromagnetism is carried by photons
the thing is nobody has figured out how
to include gravity in all this particle
action
gravity is the weakest of the four
forces by a lot
it is hundreds of millions of trillions
of trillions of times weaker than the
strongest force electromagnetism
it's why a paperclip can hold fast to a
magnet despite being in earth's
gravitational field
gravity is so weak and the particles
being studied are at such small scales
that scientists can basically ignore
gravity because it doesn't affect the
processes happening between the quarks
leptins and other three forces
but that doesn't mean it's not there
in fact if we would try to balloon the
standard model out to the scale of say
human bodies or planets then things get
really really messy
we basically have to split this micro
subatomic world and our macro world into
two separate realms into a quantum
framework and a relativistic framework
in theory there should also be a force
carrier for gravity called a graviton
but scientists have yet to physically
observe it
another strange thing that we can figure
out surrounds the higgs boson discovered
back in 2012 the higgs boson made
headlines when it was finally observed
at the large hadron collider
finally scientists had found this god
particle
the particle makes up the higgs field
which gives mass and force of all the
other particles in our universe
without it atoms would disintegrate and
the universe as we know it wouldn't
exist it was like finding a missing link
the higgs boson had existed in theory
for years but now physicists had
physical evidence to prove it
but there was one problem if the higgs
boson controls the mass and force of
everything then it should also be
applied to gravity but the boson is very
lightweight
the mass scales that gravity acts upon
like you and me and the planets are
trillions of times larger it again would
seem that there is some irreconcilable
phenomena going on here between the
micro and macro levels
scientists call this the hierarchy
problem it's weird that the higgs boson
is so lightweight
super heavy gravitational states should
mix together in a quantum mechanical way
with a boson and affect its mass but
they don't it's like all the really
heavy stuff has magically cancelled out
and left a very lightweight bosun with a
tiny yet constant mass behind
this is suspicious to many scientists
who have compared the problem to a
pencil that seems to stand straight up
on its tip without falling over
it seems like such a fine-tuned
improbability that it has led many to
wonder whether there is really a natural
order to anything or whether our
universe is really just a freak accident
unnatural even scientists and most
humans don't like to think that our
world is simply a meaningless accident
and to call the very existence of the
universe unnatural is a wild departure
from everything science stands for
so it's natural that scientists want to
find answers
one theory traces the solution all the
way back to the beginning of the
universe
theory suggests that at the very
beginning of the birth of the cosmos
everything was compressed into a tiny
dot with immense mass
part of the mass was composed of
theoretical particles called axions
which eventually expanded into an axion
field
you can think of the axion field as a
mattress
in the very beginning of the universe
billions of a second in the mattress was
tightly compressed
at the same time the higgs boson was
initially huge corresponding nicely to
the huge gravitational masses at the
heart of the hierarchy problem
but as the universe expanded the axion
field relaxed the springs of the
mattress uncoiled in the new available
space and as it did this it fixed the
mess of the higgs boson at the super
light levels we observed today
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it's just the theory though so far we've
been unable to observe axions they
remain in the realm of mathematics
numerical calculations that could
explain a lot if indeed they actually
exist
which brings us back to the large hadron
collider what researchers have been
finding when they smash particles
together through the loop is starting to
draw some serious question marks that
seem poised to threaten the standard
model they've observed behaviors and
particles that can be explained within
the standard model which pose
significant problems to the mathematics
of it all one of these observations is
the behavior of a subatomic particle
called the beauty quark
quarks are the stuff protons and
electrons are made of and the beauty
quark is the one with the most mass
according to the math of the standard
model when a beauty quark decays or
transforms into several less massive
particles it should decay into an equal
number of electrons and muon particles
but it doesn't at the large hadron
collider results have shown that beauty
quarks decay much more often into
electrons than they do into muons
another observation scientists have made
this time at fermilab's particle
accelerator in the united states is that
muons wobble
a lot
muons are like electrons more massive
cousin
like electrons they are magnetic
muons also spin
a combination of spin and charge causes
muons to wobble but when researchers
whizzed 8 billion muons around in a
superconducting magnet ring
they found that these muons wobbled a
lot more than the math and the standard
model says they should
and then there is the mystery of the w
boson
the w bosin is the carrier particle of
the weak force it's electrically charged
and helps change the fundamental makeup
of particles by switching protons into
neutrons and vice versa
this triggers nuclear fusion which lets
stars burn and creates the building
blocks for galaxies and planets
for a long time physicists thought they
knew the approximate mass of the w boson
about 80 times greater than a proton
but new evidence suggests that the w
boson is a bit bigger while its mass
isn't that much bigger it's big enough
to throw off the math of the standard
model and affect the calculations of the
masses of other particles
all these new observations are
challenging the standard model and
leading scientists to think that there
might be an undiscovered fifth force out
there acting upon these particles
a fifth force could help unify the
minuscule quantum realm and the massive
general theory of relativity
this fifth force could be made up of
something called leptoquarks
like we've mentioned earlier all matter
is made up of two fundamental families
of particles leptons and quarks
the theory of leptoquarks is about as
simple as the name it postulates that
there is another particle which is
basically a merger of the two distinct
particles
at super high energies leptons and
quarks might have a parent particle the
leptoquark
leptoquarks would be pretty massive as
far as particles go and would decay very
rapidly into quarks and leptons which is
why if they do exist they haven't been
discovered yet
but if they are somewhere in the fabric
of our universe then they could explain
why those muons are so wobbly why the
beauty quark decays so unevenly and
what's going on with that w boson
unifying two separate phenomena is not
uncommon in physics
back in the 19th century james clerk
maxwell unified electricity and
magnetism to explain the force we now
know is electromagnetism
if leptoquarks are indeed real then they
would go a long way in helping us form a
unified model of the universe
but still we need to account for gravity
if we want a fully unified theory of
everything in addition to the theory of
a fifth force two others might prove
useful in helping us figure out exactly
what's going on
supersymmetry and string theory symmetry
in nature is easy enough to understand
it's when one thing mirrors another
when newton connected an apple falling
from a tree to the force that keeps the
moon in place
he discovered a symmetry at the
subatomic level there is the theory of
supersymmetry
supersymmetry postulates that each of
the 17 known fundamental particles has a
partner particle
if this is true it means we only have
half the picture of what's going on in
our universe
these super symmetrical particles would
solve the problem of the higgs boson
being so light and work towards
incorporating gravity into the equation
then there is string theory
string theory or a particular subset of
string theory called m theory uses
theoretical particles called gravitons
to sew gravity together with the
standard model
gravitons which we touched briefly on at
the beginning are as of yet undiscovered
in purely theoretical force carriers for
gravity
much like photons are the force carriers
for electromagnetism
gluons are for the strong force and the
wnc bosons are for the weak force in
string theory gravitons photons bosons
and everything else are not single point
particles but instead minuscule ribbons
of energy or strings that vibrate in
different ways
its equations are dense but described as
extremely elegant and more importantly
extremely consistent
however for string theory to work there
needs to be 11 dimensions which are
curled up into tiny balls of space less
than 10 to the power of 33 centimeters
wide the strings themselves and these
tiny coils of interdimensional space are
far too small to be measured by anything
like the large hadron collider 10
million billion times smaller than
anything the particle accelerator can
detect so it seems like we're left with
questions that still need answering
is our universe a fluke
some random coincidence that sprang into
existence with no unifying principles to
draw together
or are the answers still out there
waiting to be discovered as we develop
the technology to recreate the
beginnings of our universe
what do you think
is there a unified theory out there let
us know in the comments and don't forget
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