
New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed - furcyd
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/new-boson-hidden-in-beryllium-decay-check-new-physics-maybe/
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particleguy
This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet. All of this hype about the X17
particle is coming from a pre-print on the arXiv.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459](https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459)

They claim a 7.2 sigma result, but the distribution of the null-hypothesis
(called PDF(exp) in the paper) was determined from simulations of one atomic
transition and "external pair creation on the target backing", and the only
source of systematic error they took into account was the position of the
target relative to the beam-line. It seems a little paltry to me in terms of
trying to take into account possible sources of error... And given that the
excess appears in only a particular angular region, they seem to be ignoring
the Look-elsewhere effect ("oh, no excess signal here? Let me look
elsewhere...") and over-stating their significance. The paper also is riddled
with spelling and grammar mistakes, and while that doesn't have anything to do
with the science, it does say something about the sloppiness of the
researcher, I think.

Anyway, I can't imagine this passing the muster of peer-review in its current
state. But I'll be curious to see the revised paper with more details included
(if they can actually get it published).

EDIT: They did explain how they determined the background distribution, I
edited my comment above.

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account73466
>> This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet.

ArXiv pre-prints are pretty normal in physics and math.

>> that doesn't have anything to do with the science, it does say something
about the sloppiness of the researcher, I think.

Interesting. BTW, Krasznahorkay is a highly-cited researchers.

~~~
gliese1337
Yes, they are normal... but they also aren't even peer-reviewed yet.

Ergo, you can treat it as more significant than a random physics crank posting
on his blog, but not as trustworthy as something that has in fact been
properly vetted.

~~~
SubiculumCode
At least in my field, there is an option during journal submission to submit
your work automatically to a similar archive.

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ddavis
The field is not sold on this. Some previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084)

~~~
bilekas
I am skeptic also, but at the same time, I remember the skepticism of the
higgs.

I am more than welcome to be proven wrong though!

This news is a little crazy and I don't think people 'not being sold on it'
should stop people trying.

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machrider
The Higgs boson was expected though, while this claimed boson is not predicted
by the model at all?

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amelius
Yes, a better comparison would perhaps be the faster-than-light neutrinos.

~~~
bilekas
Fair.. Absolutely fair, personally I don't believe faster-than-light neutrinos
exist.

It will be an incredible change, if something else happens: that's really all,
I'm not pushing some agenda.

~~~
zamalek
> personally I don't believe faster-than-light neutrinos exist.

You don't have to believe they they exist, they were quickly and conclusively
disproven. As I recall, GPS was used as a time source and there was timer
inaccuracies on Earth due to relativistic effects.

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ssivark
Surprisingly confident tone in the title for an experimental result that is
far from confirmed! Experimental research is _damn hard_ and it is very easy
to make tiny oversights resulting in signals like this (in an absolute sense —
with all respect to the Hungarian lab which has made this claim). While the
possibility is exciting, public facing communication should be very careful to
not jump the gun.

> _”...breaks Standard Model”_

SMH

~~~
ephimetheus
One of the people on the paper works at cern actually.

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reggieband
Not really directly related to the article, but YouTube recently recommended
to me a series of videos from "Strange Loop" which is some kind of tech
conference. One of the talks was "Jagged, ragged, awkward arrays" by Jim
Pivarski [1]. It is fairly narrow in scope talking about a very particular
data modelling problem but it introduced me to the kind of data processing
physicists do to make these kinds of discoveries. Just wanted to share in case
anyone else finds this kind of thing interesting.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NxWpU7NArk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NxWpU7NArk)

~~~
ejwhite
Heh, I went to grad school with him. Haven't heard what he's been up to in
over a decade.

I was solidly in the "C++" column back then, but have since become a data
scientist who now uses numpy/Python for all machine learning. That talk was a
very interesting, helped me to understand what they're doing in my old field
these days. Thanks for sharing.

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isoprophlex
I was extremely hyped the last time something about this news was posted;
someone explained to me that potentially model-breaking things happen all the
time, and that this needs super intense cross validation before it's actually
considered valid.

Reader beware.

~~~
bilekas
Reader beware should be replaced with : 'Proof required'

There is nothing wrong with being hyped about a potential find. I will remain
excited without passing assumptions!

~~~
SubiculumCode
Not proof. This is not mathematics. More evidence is required. Further
confirmation. More work identifying potential confounds. But not proof.

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juanjmanfredi
This research group has claimed previous discoveries of different bosons
before [0]. They have never succeeded in reproducing a result. The scientific
community is right to be skeptical. If there is real physics there, then
follow up experiments should be able to reproduce the effect.

[0] [https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces-
scrutin...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces-
scrutiny-20160607/)

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mrandish
If I'm reading this correctly it seems like it's pretty interesting even if
it's not validated. They either discover a new particle or they discover a new
way to arrive at anomalous results.

I'm thinking back to the team that had the result that appeared as if it was
faster than light communication (IIRC). Even they didn't fully buy into their
result but they published because they checked it every way they could think
of and couldn't explain it. As I recall, the underlying error was pretty
interesting on its own and in some sense contributed something new to our
understanding of "how not to be wrong".

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archgoon
This will probably get much more traction once an independent group confirms
it. I don't believe this article presents any new information on X17 that we
haven't already heard.

~~~
ncmncm
Meaning they said they got it from He, too, before?

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ufmace
Well that's rather interesting. Sounds like 2 separate detections by the same
team and no other confirmations yet. And the presumptive new particle doesn't
sound like it's predicted by any of the current beyond-standard-model
theories. So we're gonna need a few more detections by a few more teams. Going
to be very interesting results for theoretical physics if it holds up though.

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throwaway_tech
Anyone know if this boson was predicted by E8 Theory?

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jerf
If this is substantiated, it will be retrodicted by any number of theories.

I keed, I keed... but I'm also partially serious. There's been a ton of
theories over the years that would produce new particles, whose only flaw is
that those particles weren't found. It wouldn't be at all surprising if there
are past theories that with just a little tiny sensible tweak will turn out to
contain this particle, and possibly also some other explanation as to why it
wasn't found until now. In a sense, that's just a rephrasing of the fact that
particle physics has been starved for data over the past couple of decades. No
shortage of ideas, but no data to test them against. It really wouldn't be
that surprising that several of the tons of ideas will be able to easily
accommodate this new data, even as others are completely destroyed by it.

~~~
throwaway_tech
Well I can't speak to any number of theories, but the beauty of E8 is either
the boson was predicted or it wasn't...if it wasn't, they don't have the
luxury of revising E8 to create another boson or particle.

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danellis
"Essentially, the scientists took some lithium and shot protons at it."

How does this actually work? Presumably it's a very small amount of lithium.
What is it held in? How are the protons so accurately steered towards it? The
accelerator ring is comparatively very wide, right?

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ncmncm
Lithium is cheap. It prob'ly has to be chilled while it's being blasted so
they can do it long enough. Steering proton beams is what accelerators are
for. You need a small target spot just so the detectors get things from a
fixed angle.

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amriksohata
Can someone explain to me like I'm a five year (that understands the standard
model)

