<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>To solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can \u201clive\u201d outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our left-handed universe. They designed a mind-bending experiment at the Department of Energy\u2019s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to try to detect a particle that has been speculated but not spotted. If found, the theorized \u201cmirror neutron\u201d\u2014a dark-matter twin to the neutron\u2014could explain a discrepancy between answers from two types of neutron lifetime experiments and provide the first observation of dark matter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDark matter remains one of the most important and puzzling questions in science\u2014clear evidence we don\u2019t understand all matter in nature,\u201d said ORNL\u2019s Leah Broussard, who led the study published in Physical Review Letters.<\/p>\n<p>Neutrons and protons make up an atom\u2019s nucleus. However, they also can exist outside nuclei. Last year, using the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, co-author Frank Gonzalez, now at ORNL, led the <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevLett.127.162501\">most precise measurement ever<\/a> of how long free neutrons live before they decay, or turn into protons, electrons and anti-neutrinos. The answer\u2014877.8 seconds, give or take 0.3 seconds, or a little under 15 minutes\u2014hinted at a crack in the Standard Model of particle physics. That model describes the behavior of subatomic particles, such as the three quarks that make up a neutron. The flipping of quarks initiates neutron decay into protons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can \u201clive\u201d outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our left-handed universe. They designed a mind-bending experiment at the Department of Energy\u2019s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to try to detect a particle that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,33,418,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-cosmology","category-internet","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141314,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141312\/revisions\/141314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}