The Standard Model of particle physics is the most complete description of physical phenomena not involving gravity known to date. It accommodates all known fundamental particles and explains their interactions in a compact way.
One of its features is lepton universality, which implies that the electron, the muon, and the tau particle couple with the same strength to the particles responsible for the electroweak force.
A recent paper from the LHCb collaboration studying the decay of (B) mesons has found evidence against lepton universality at the (3.1\sigma) level.
Anomalies like this one have happened before in the LHC, so it's not clear the result will survive new incoming data. The gold standard for discovery in particle physics is conventionally taken to be (5\sigma).
| Indicator | Value |
|---|---|
| Stars | ★★★☆☆ |
| Platform | Metaculus |
| Number of forecasts | 134 |
The Standard Model of particle physics is the most complete description of physical phenomena not involving gravity known to date. It accommodates all known fundamental particles and explains their interactions in a compact way.
One of its features...