Star Geek

For years, particle physicists working to understand the most fundamental principles on which all matter is based have relied on what's called the Standard Model, which groups fundamental particles into families based on symmetries. One of the reasons it's become, as it's name implies, the standard has been its ability to make successful predictions about then-unknown particles.

But a change may - emphasize may - be in the works. Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have been observing disintegrations of a short-lived particle called a K-meson, or kaon. According to the model, in very rare cases - about one out of seven billion - a kaon will disintegrate into three particles called a charged pion particle, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino.

But after watching more than seven trillion such disintegrations, they saw that particular pattern occur at twice the predicted rate, a significant difference.

At present, it's unknown if this is an experimental fluke. But if it's not, if it's a real result, it would challenge current thinking in a way that could point to an even deeper hypothesis about the most basic nature of matter.

Footnote: For anyone interested, when a charged pion, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino combine, they do not make a kaon. The reaction only happens one way, which arguably is experimental proof of the existence of an "arrow of time."