Every action in our world is powered by a “force of nature.” Currently, there are four main forces that scientists cling to; gravity, electromagnetism, weak interaction, and strong interaction. The latter two are technically considered nuclear forces. However, some scientists believe a fifth force of nature may exist, and a new paper claims to have found evidence of it.
A group of researchers from Switzerland, Australia, and Germany believe that this fifth force could be hiding deep within the hearts of atoms. While the Standard Model of physics has evolved over the years to help explain quantum and cosmic examples, there are still some massive gaps that leave scientists and physicists baffled.
Dark matter is a big one, of course, and even gravity hasn’t been fully solved, despite being one of the primary forces of nature. Introducing a fifth force of nature, as well as other fields and particles, could broaden our understanding of the universe in important ways. But finding the evidence to prove these forces actually exist is the difficult part.
That’s why the researchers involved in this new study started small. Instead of trying to work at a cosmic scale, they started looking at things on an atomic level. They focused their attention on the nuclei of four different kinds of calcium. Typically, electrons are confined by the attraction between their own charge and the positively charged particles in the center of the atom.
But if you give them a little kick, they can actually transcend to a higher orbit. This phenomenon is known as atomic transition. The exact timing of the jump depends heavily on the construction of the nucleus, which means an element can have multiple atomic transitions depending on the number of neutrons found within it.
The researchers believe that a fifth force of nature could be the driving engine behind these small interactions. Their experiments found that there was a small amount of room between the atomic transitions — just enough room for a particle with a mass believed to be somewhere between 10 and 10 million electronvolts.
Determining whether or not that ambiguity is indeed another force of nature will require additional experimentation and improved calculations, though.
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