{"id":99240,"date":"2019-12-02T06:37:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T14:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/fifth-force-of-nature-the-plot-thickens-for-a-hypothetical-x17-particle"},"modified":"2019-12-02T06:37:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T14:37:20","slug":"fifth-force-of-nature-the-plot-thickens-for-a-hypothetical-x17-particle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/fifth-force-of-nature-the-plot-thickens-for-a-hypothetical-x17-particle","title":{"rendered":"Fifth Force of Nature: The Plot Thickens for a Hypothetical \u201cX17\u201d Particle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/fifth-force-of-nature-the-plot-thickens-for-a-hypothetical-x17-particle2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fresh evidence of an unknown particle that could carry a fifth force of nature gives the NA64 collaboration at CERN a new incentive to continue searches.<\/p>\n<p>In 2015, a team of scientists <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1504.01527\">spotted<\/a> an unexpected glitch, or \u201canomaly,\u201d in a nuclear transition that could be explained by the production of an unknown particle. About a year later, theorists <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevLett.117.071803\">suggested<\/a> that the new particle could be evidence of a new fundamental force of nature, in addition to electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak forces. The findings caught worldwide attention and prompted, among other studies, a <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevLett.120.231802\">direct search<\/a> for the particle by the NA64 collaboration at CERN.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/1910.10459.pdf\">new paper (pdf)<\/a> from the same team, led by Attila Krasznahorkay at the Atomki institute in Hungary, now reports another anomaly, in a similar nuclear transition, that could also be explained by the same hypothetical particle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fresh evidence of an unknown particle that could carry a fifth force of nature gives the NA64 collaboration at CERN a new incentive to continue searches. In 2015, a team of scientists spotted an unexpected glitch, or \u201canomaly,\u201d in a nuclear transition that could be explained by the production of an unknown particle. About a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99240","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\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}