osmology and particle physics are
arguably two of the most mind-
boggling fields in all of science, seeking
to explain the fundamental workings
of our universe on very different scales. So far,
the 21st century has seen huge advances in both
these allied quests, with cosmologists confirming
the existence of dark energy and making further
advances in the understanding of mysterious dark
matter. Meanwhile, particle physicists have pieced
together the missing pieces of the ‘Standard Model’,
a long-standing theory explaining the structure of
the matter that makes up our visible universe.
But there are still some big questions left for
scientists in both fields. For cosmologists, one of
the biggest puzzles is the nature of dark matter –
we may now understand many of its properties
and behaviours, but we still don’t know what it
is. Another question surrounds the driving force
behind inf lation – the sudden expansion of the
newborn universe in the first microsecond after
the Big Bang.
Meanwhile, particle physicists wrestle with
annoying loose ends at the fringes of the Standard
Model. Why do the six distinct quarks – particles
that bind together to create more familiar particles
such as protons and neutrons – have wildly
different masses? How does the famous Higgs
boson – associated with the process that gives other
particles their mass – originate, and why does this
particle display less than 100 million-billionth of the
mass and energy predicted by theory?
Is it possible that a single new theory could
resolve all these annoying questions and perhaps
provide a way of finally uniting the physics of the
smallest and largest scales? That’s the remarkable
possibility emerging from recent theoretical
breakthroughs at theoretical hubs such as the
Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Nuclear Physics in
Heidelberg, Germany. And while various theories
proposed to ‘patch’ the Standard Model so far have
called for anything from half a dozen new particles
to an entire supersymmetric mirror-universe of
undiscovered stuff, the new theory relies on just a
single new subatomic particle. Different researchers
have proposed various names for this elusive
particle, but so far the ‘axif lavon’ seems to have
gained most traction.
This curious name combines those of two
other hypothetical particles of longer standing
- the ‘axion’ and the ‘f lavon’. Both proposed
independently as long ago as the 1970s, each
aimed at solving its own distinct problem in the
Standard Model.
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Solving the universe