{"id":215836,"date":"2025-06-13T06:16:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T11:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/qa-physics-and-the-value-of-scientific-disappointment"},"modified":"2025-06-13T06:16:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T11:16:22","slug":"qa-physics-and-the-value-of-scientific-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/qa-physics-and-the-value-of-scientific-disappointment","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Physics and the value of scientific disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Sharing disappointing results with a world of researchers working to find what they hope will be the \u201cdiscovery of the century\u201d isn\u2019t an easy task, but that is what Penn State theoretical physicist Zoltan Fodor and his international research group did five years ago with their extensive calculation of the strength of the magnetic field around the muon <\/a>\u2014a sub-atomic particle similar to, but heavier than, an electron. At the time, their finding was the first to close the gap between theory and experimental measurements, bringing it in line with the Standard Model, the well-tested physics theory that has guided particle physics for decades.<\/p>\n

Earlier on the same day, after almost 20 years, a new experimental result was also published showing a strong discrepancy between the theory and the experiment<\/a>. This was interpreted by most physicists as a sign of new physics, and many physicists shared some skepticism of Fodor\u2019s results and hoped that with more research, the other groups\u2019 result would ring true.<\/p>\n

Why? Twenty-four years ago, in an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, physicists detected what seemed to be a discrepancy between measurements of the muon\u2019s \u201cmagnetic moment<\/a>\u201d\u2014the strength of its magnetic field\u2014and theoretical calculations<\/a> of what that measurement should be, raising the tantalizing possibility of undiscovered physical particles or forces. They reported that the muon was more magnetic than was predicted by the Standard Model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharing disappointing results with a world of researchers working to find what they hope will be the \u201cdiscovery of the century\u201d isn\u2019t an easy task, but that is what Penn State theoretical physicist Zoltan Fodor and his international research group did five years ago with their extensive calculation of the strength of the magnetic field [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215836","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}