![]() They began collecting data in 2018, and have now presented the results from the first year of operations. To verify the Brookhaven results, researchers rebuilt the experiment - which keeps muons running in circles around a superconducting ring magnet 15 metres in diameter - at Fermilab. The original Muon g − 2 experiment gave many physicists hope that new particles would soon be discovered. Physicists perform detailed and lengthy calculations of the contributions from all known particles, so if the experimental results differ significantly from the predicted value of g − 2, they reason that previously unknown types of particle must be lurking in the vacuum. The magnetic moment of elementary particles is influenced by ‘virtual’ versions of known elementary particles that continually pop out of the vacuum only to disappear a fraction of a second later. The Brookhaven experiment measured that tiny difference, known as g – 2, but found it to be slightly bigger than theorists had predicted. The standard model of particle physics says that, in the appropriate units, the muon’s magnetic moment should be a number very close, but not equal, to 2. Physicists measured the strength of the particle’s magnetic moment, a property that makes it act like a tiny bar magnet. Muon g − 2 (pronounced ‘g minus 2’) first hinted 2 that something was amiss with the muon in 2001, when the experiment was running at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. ![]() Long-awaited muon physics experiment nears moment of truth The results are “extremely encouraging” for those hoping to discover other particles, says Susan Gardner, a physicist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. ![]() ![]() The Muon g − 2 collaboration at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) outside Chicago, Illinois, reported the latest measurements in a webcast on 7 April, and published them in Physical Review Letters 1. If the results hold up, they could ultimately force major changes in theoretical physics and reveal the existence of completely new fundamental particles. An experiment in the United States has confirmed an earlier finding that the particles - massive, unstable cousins of the electron - are more magnetic than researchers originally expected. The storage-ring magnet used for the g − 2 experiment at Fermilab. ![]()
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