Is There One All Powerful Superforce Controlling The Universe?

our understanding of the universe

is a house of cards

built high upon a scaffold of

pre-existing theories

and tentative one-off results

and so most experiments in modern

theoretical cosmology

are not as they were in the early days

of physics

they are not voyages of blind discovery

but rather

finely tuned confirmations of

predictions already made

of results already hinted

the higgs boson was first predicted in

1964

and finally confirmed in 2013

just as expected but what scientists

really hope for

are surprises a result that topples the

house of cards and builds a new one in

its place

or totally cements the linkages and

proves the theories

once and for all

[Music]

and so in early 2021 in a laboratory

near chicago

200 virtually assembled scientists

shared a gasp of excitement

had just such a result the experiment

and analysis was the culmination of more

than 60 years work

involving physicists from 35

institutions in seven countries

worldwide

and yet until an envelope was opened in

batavia illinois

and a secretive key typed into a

computer not one of them

really knew what they had accomplished

this elaborate cloak and dagger approach

to experimental physics perhaps more

suited to a star-studded film festival

was necessary to avoid any one of the

hundreds of collaborators inadvertently

biasing their findings towards the

desired outcome

[Music]

this latest experiment at ferma lab was

concerned with the behavior

of muons these exotic particles are the

heavier cousins of the electrons

and exist only for a couple of

microseconds before decaying into

something else

like an electron a muon has electric

charge and behaves like a spinning

magnet

but that spin wobbles when muons move

through a magnetic field

so using the incredibly complex

mathematical tools of quantum mechanics

and the so-called standard model of

particle physics

scientists have predicted exactly how

much the muons

should wobble this theoretical

prediction represents the sum

of what we think we know about how the

universe works

and the elaborate experiment at ferma

lab was designed to test

this theory to find out if we

are right

[Music]

to do this researchers spent four years

installing and calibrating a huge

c-shaped magnet some 15 meters in

diameter with an impeccably uniform

magnetic field

for more than a year they spared muons

around the magnet

and measured their wobble

[Music]

and sitting at the controls of this

machine waiting

for the beam to fire our researchers

would have had plenty of time

to contemplate the theoretical house of

cards

on which their predictions were built

all matter in the universe from the

muons inside the magnet

to the researchers themselves is subject

to four fundamental irreducible forces

gravity keeps the scientist pinned to

the seat of her chair

keeps the huge magnet stuck to the

surface of the earth

and keeps the earth in orbit around the

sun

electromagnetism provides the invisible

pull within the gigantic magnet

but it does more than that it is

responsible for the electric currents

that flow through the equipment's

controls

and for the electrical impulses that

spark through the scientist's body

to keep her heart beating and her

neurons firing

shrinking down further to the scale of

atoms themselves

the strong nuclear force grips the

particles together in every atomic

nucleus

holding them fast despite the repulsion

of their like charges

without this force not a single atom in

her body

the room or the entire universe could

exist

they would simply fly apart in a cloud

of unconnected quarks

and yet in a few thousand atoms inside

the scientist's body

the weak nuclear force is driving such

elemental destruction

the fourth fundamental force is the

agent of radioactive decay

which sees atomic nuclei like the

potassium 40 inside our cells

cracked open and transformed together

the actions of the four fundamental

forces gravity electromagnetism and the

strong and weak nuclear forces are

enough to describe

every single phenomenon in the universe

today

except for it seems the wobble

of muons the revelation unlocked with

the opening of thermolab's envelope

was that the intricate predictions built

on these four forces for the muons

were not in fact correct

muons wobble more than they should and

the results

showed with unprecedented precision that

there is likely

to be something else at play a fifth

force

as yet undiscovered there is still much

work to be done to understand the

significance of this curious

muon wobble but it gives us cause to

re-examine what we think we know about

the four

fundamental forces that we are aware of

our understanding of them too the result

of centuries of scientific revelation

why

are they fundamental to the universe and

are they really

as distinct as we think how

did the directionless quantum foam at

the beginning of our universe give birth

to these

fundamental natural laws

extending our house of cards back to the

very

birth of the cosmos we find

that things looked very different for a

brief moment

of grand unification

[Music]

the existence of invisible forces at

play in our universe

has been recognized for thousands of

years and mankind has strived to

understand and harness them

for almost as long load stones pieces of

naturally magnetic rock

were treasured and used for divination

by the chinese since the second century

ancient egyptians were wary of shocks

from electric fish

and early philosophers experimented with

static electricity

with rods of amber rubbed on cats fur

but these strange phenomena graduated

from mere curiosities

in the 17th and 18th centuries as the

scientific revolution

forced them to yield their secrets they

became the subject of rigorous study

by scholars and statesmen alike founding

father benjamin franklin reputedly sold

all his possessions in order to fund his

research