Researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have observed particle decays that deviate from predictions of the Standard Model. The findings come from the LHCb experiment and show a four-standard-deviation tension with theory. If confirmed, the results could point to undiscovered particles or forces.
The data come from studies of rare “penguin decays” involving B mesons, which transform into a kaon, a pion and two muons. Scientists examined angles, energies and decay rates using records of about 650 billion B meson decays collected between 2011 and 2018. The measurements differ from Standard Model expectations, with only a one-in-16,000 chance that random fluctuation explains the discrepancy if the theory is correct.