Big Physics News: Fifth Fundamental Force Likely Found

It's not an absolutely definite, but researchers in Illinois have probably identified a fifth fundamental force of nature, adding onto the four we know today: gravity, electromagnetism (the two we can actually see and experience), and the strong and weak nuclear forces. The strong nuclear force acts like a sort of glue, keeping protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom from flying apart; the weak nuclear force is a bit harder to pin down, but it's basically responsible for nuclear decay and radiation.

The new fifth force is perhaps unsurprisingly one that also acts on the subatomic level, and as of right now all it seems to do is influence the behavior of muons, a fundamental particle (not made of anything else) similar to an electron but many times heavier. In an experiment, the Illinois scientists sent muons around a 14-meter ring and then applied a magnetic field, expecting the muons to wobble at a certain rate as predicted by our current model of physics. But they wobbled faster than expected. Yes, that's enough to make a fifth fundamental force likely. There's just a 1 in 40,000 chance the discovery is a statistical fluke, although a chance of 1 in 3.5 million is necessary to make things official.

To be fair, this fifth force may do more than make some obscure particle dance a bit faster. There may be a new, undiscovered particle associated with it, and it may have something to do with the whole "universe expansion is speeding up for no good reason" thing. Stay tuned, there may be more very exciting subatomic particle news coming up in the future.

Beer of the Week

The beer: Project Happy Hole-idayz

Brewed by: Wicked Weed Brewing, Asheville, North Carolina

Description (from Untappd): "Brewed with Sheetz vanilla donut holes, this collaboration is a deep golden pale ale with notes of fresh baked donuts, vanilla frosting, graham crackers, honey, and malted barley."

Would I buy it again?: I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this beer. I don't want to say that it's bad, it's just ... strange. The decision to make a doughnut beer out of a pale ale is quite frankly baffling. You would expect this to be a stout, maybe a porter, but not a pale ale. On the one hand, I respect the choice to be different, but on the other, I have to imagine this beer would have been much better if a more appropriate beer style had been chosen. If there was a doughnut stout, I'd be all over that in an instant.