Mysterious forces are in play 100 metres below the ground in Switzerland. Scientists from the European nuclear research institute of CERN cannot get their results to fit basic physics theories.
For 14 years CERN scientists have made particles collide in their 27km-long LHC accelerator, studying the high-energy results of the collisions. Generally, their experiments have confirmed what we know about the nature of the universe and the forces of nature that control it.
But over the past five years, results from one of the detectors, LHCb, have been puzzling the physicists. The detector has observed a specific exotic particle that does not behave in the way it should as it decays into lower-energy particles. The results indicate the effect of some unknown force – perhaps a new force of nature that could be added to the four that we already know and study.
