A revolution in Physics
Saturday 25 September 2021, 6.00pm to 7.00pm BST
On the 7th of April 2021, physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago announced that muons — elementary particles similar to electrons — wobbled more than expected while shooting around a magnetised ring. This seemingly innocuous statement in fact provides strong evidence for the existence of a new fundamental force of nature unaccounted for in current theories. If confirmed, this measurement would herald a revolutionary shift in our understanding of fundamental physics, potentially shedding light on some of its deepest mysteries, including the nature of dark matter and even the origins of the Universe itself.
However, alternative detailed calculations performed by supercomputers dispute its significance, claiming that these results do in fact agree precisely with our current theory. Could we be on the cusp of a revolution? In this talk, Dr Fawcett and Dr Drew will explain this new experimental result and discuss its exciting implications.
Speakers
Dr William Fawcett
Dr William Fawcett is a particle physicist, who splits his time between the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and CERN near Geneva, where he works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He uses the data collected by the experiments at CERN to search for new particles which could help piece together a fundamental understanding of the Universe. He joined Homerton in 2018 as a College Research Associate.
Dr Amelia Drew (Fellow of Homerton)
Dr Amelia Drew is a theoretical cosmologist in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in Cambridge. She currently works primarily on radiation from cosmic strings, so-called 'topological defects' that can arise in the early Universe. Amelia joined Homerton as a Junior Research Fellow in October 2020.
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