Will the Large Hadron Collider find a new fifth force of nature?

Science Weekly

The Guardian

Science

4.2 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2022

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has recently been switched back on after a three-year hiatus to resolve a mysterious and tantalising result from its previous run. So far, everything discovered at the LHC has agreed with the standard model, the guiding theory of particle physics that describes the building blocks of matter, and the forces that guide them. However, recent findings show particles behaving in a way that can’t be explained by known physics. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Guardian science correspondent Hannah Devlin and Prof Jon Butterworth about why this might be a clue towards solving some of the deepest mysteries of the universe, and how the LHC will be searching for a potential fifth force of nature. This podcast was amended on 12 May 2022. An earlier version incorrectly claimed that the standard model incorporates four fundamental forces of nature, instead of three.. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the speed of light.
0:27.0	The Large Hadron Collider at CERN. You probably know the name. The accelerator last hit the
0:37.4	headlines a decade ago with the detection of the Higgs boson.
0:42.0	As a layman I would now say, I think we have it.
0:46.0	You agree?
0:48.0	Yeah.
0:50.0	Its long awaited discovery proved that our ideas about the fundamental particles and the four forces of nature are pretty good.
0:59.0	But they're not perfect. Some fairly big mysteries remain, which makes a recent experiment at the
1:07.2	large Hadron collider rather tantalizing.
1:11.4	Scientists have found particles behaving a bit strangely.
1:16.0	It's a bizarre result that could be pointing towards the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.
1:24.0	So, does the Large Hadron Collider have another revolutionary discovery on its hands?
1:37.0	And if it does, what could it mean for our fundamental understanding of the universe.
1:43.0	From the Guardian, I'm Madeline Finley and this is Science Weekly. Hannah Devlin, you're the Guardian's science correspondent, so I know that you get very exciting
2:08.4	research coming into your inbox basically every day, but you recently sent me this very interesting story about the
2:15.8	large Hadron collider getting switched back on and you said intriguingly that it's on the
2:22.0	lookout for a fifth force of nature. Now it's been
2:26.1	about ten years since I had to think about complex particle physics when we were
2:30.2	all talking about the Higgs boson. So give me some background to this. Why are
2:35.9	particle physicists all of a flutter? Yeah, so the Large Hadron Collider or LHC has been switched off for three years.
2:45.9	They've been upgrading it.
2:47.6	But actually, in the period that it's been switched off, a very interesting paper came out, perhaps didn't get as much coverage as it might
	...

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