Muon’s wobbling weirdly.
An esoteric particle called the muon wobbles weirdly in a magnetic field, and physicists around the world go a frothing frenzy of excitement ... because maybe these wobbles mean new physics! The experiments at Fermilab and Brookhaven labs disagree quite firmly with theoretical calculations, which is exciting. And because new physics can be tested with modern astronomy — sometimes it's the only way we can explore the boundaries of the theories of the universe — then Emily is keen to understand just what's going on. So maybe we've just seen signs of new forces, new particles, even supersymmetry ... but then again, maybe not.
Syzygy is produced by Chris Stewart and co-hosted by Dr Emily Brunsden from the Department of Physics at the University of York.
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Things we talked about in this episode:
Ingenuity’s first flights on Mars!
The Fermilab g-2 experiment
A cartoon explainer of the muon g-2
The Standard Model of particle physics
Lattice results and the muon g-2
Since you’re here … You might be interested in a new, sciencey podcast: Science, possibly — science-adjacent stories by Chris Stewart and James Lees.