Particle’s surprise mass threatens to upend the standard model

Data from an old experiment finds that the mass of the W boson is higher than theory predicts, hinting at future breakthroughs.

Email Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Whatsapp X Access through your institution Buy or subscribe From its resting place outside Chicago, Illinois, a long-defunct experiment is threatening to throw the field of elementary particles off balance. Physicists have toiled for ten years to squeeze a crucial new measurement out of the experiment’s old data, and the results are now in. The team has found that the W boson — a fundamental particle that carries the weak nuclear force — is significantly heavier than theory predicts. Access options Access through your institution Access Nature and 54 othe

related reading

• Fermilab Says Particle Is Heavy Enough to Break the Standard Model | Quanta Magazinequantamagazine.org
• What No New Particles Means for Physics | Quanta Magazinequantamagazine.org
• What’s next for Higgs boson research? – Home | CERNhome.cern
• What’s so special about the Higgs boson? – Home | CERNhome.cern
• Vibe physics: The AI grad student \ Anthropicanthropic.com
• Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics… and It’s Beautiful-Stephen Wolfram Writingswritings.stephenwolfram.com
• What Is a Particle? | Quanta Magazinequantamagazine.org
• Neutrinos could shed light on why the Universe has so much more matter than antimatternature.com
• The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It | Scientific Americanscientificamerican.com
• Physicists Finally Know How the Strong Force Gets Its Strength | Scientific Americanscientificamerican.com
• Is everything made of particles, fields or both combined?aeon.co
• Why the hunt for reality is an impossible burden for physicsaeon.co