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Physicists on the CMS experiment announce the most elaborate mass measurement of a particle that is notoriously difficult to study and has captivated the physics community for decades.

Physicists from the Muon g-2 collaboration have measured the magnetic moment of the muon to unprecedented precision and the collaboration’s latest work has been published in Physical Review D. What is next for Muon g-2?

There are patterns seen in quarks and leptons that remain unexplained, but it can be hypothesized that quarks and leptons might be created of still smaller particles. Does the Standard Model allow for an even smaller layer of matter to exist?

The unusually large Muon has threatened the Standard Model for decades, but new data parks the particle inside the confines of established physics. The BMW Collaboration’s recently posted research suggests the difference between the muon’s predicted anomalous magnetic moment and that predicted by the Standard Model is not as large as previous findings suggested.

How are cosmology and particle physics connected? Observing the motions of stars and galaxies can reveal the influence of as-yet-undiscovered particles, while studying fundamental particles in the lab can tell us about the birth and evolution of the cosmos.

The science world is mourning the loss of British theoretical physicist, Peter Higgs who passed away at the age of 94. He was the namesake of the boson that was discovered in 2012. The Higgs boson was a crucial to the theoretical edifice that physicists built known as the standard model of particles and fields.

The ATLAS collaboration measured the W-boson width at the LHC for the first time. The W-boson width had previously been measured at CERN’s LEP collider and Fermilab’s Tevatron collider. This is the most precise measurement to date made by a single experiment, and—while a bit larger—it is consistent with the Standard-Model prediction to within 2.5 standard deviations.

The researchers identified the origin of discrepancies in recent predictions of the muon’s magnetic moment. Their findings could contribute to the investigation of dark matter and other aspects of the new physics.

From Popular Science, August 17, 2023: Breaking the Standard Model would be one of the biggest moments in particle physics history. The Muon g-2 collaboration reported that the muon doesn’t always look like physicists expect it to look, but the collaboration isn’t done. Once they analyze all the remaining data, physicists believe they can make their g minus 2 estimate twice as precise again.

From The Conversation, Aug. 10, 2023: The new results of the Muon g-2 experiment are summarized by a group of Postdocs from the University of Liverpool. The latest results examined four times as many muons as the 2021 result, cutting the total uncertainty by a factor of two. This makes the measurement the most precise determination of the muon’s wobble ever made on Muon g-2.