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Dear List Members:
The hot piece of news last week came out of Brookhaven labs. In an
experiment that measures the precession rate of a polarized beam of muons
traveling in a magnetic field, it now appears that with a 99 percent
certainty that the predictions of the standard model are incorrect.
Brookhaven lab was investigating a property called the positive
muon anomalous moment. While a basic calculation puts this value at 2 a more
detailed calculations with takes into considerations all the possible virtual
processes give a value slightly greater than 2. However due to the results
obtained at Brookhaven we have now most likely observed a result which does
not agree with standard model predictions. One of the exciting possible
explanations for this is that we are seeing the signature of virtual
Supersymmetry particles. If this is so than this might be the first
experimental confirmation of a theory beyond the standard model. Also another
possible explanation might be that the muon is a composite particle, an
equally exciting possibility.
All this is pretty preliminary and it will take about a year of data
analysis to be sure some systematic effect has not been overlooked. However
the Physicist involved are claiming a 99 percent confidence level for their
finding.
Bob Zannelli
This item screams for a citation! Please let list members know where
we may read something about it. There are lots of questions hanging
in the air otherwise, and speculative discussion by an uninformed
public is not the best way to resolve them. At least the name (well,
some of the leading names) of the scientist making this exaggerated
claim should be included so we may mess about in the arXiv!
Leigh