Live on Channel Five – Eduard Boos, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
Presenter: Have we, people far removed from nuclear physics, understood correctly that the main sensation is that the muons appeared not where they were expected but off to one side? As some publications put it, “having overcome the vacuum barrier”, that is, outside the apparatus?
Eduard Boos, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, head of a department at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University: On the whole you have understood correctly, but it still needs to be made more precise. It is true that yesterday information was posted to the international archive of papers that scientists had observed interesting new events, and these events are unusual in that the muons produced in them appeared about one and a half to two centimetres from the interaction point. Whereas when they appear at distances of about 0.2 centimetres from the interaction point – that is all perfectly well understood, and it is all described very well by the existing model. But muons born as far as that from the interaction point, at two centimetres – that really is an interesting result. As to how far it really is so, the authors of the paper themselves say that it has to be checked and rechecked. Because in general there have been, and there have already been in the history of high-energy physics, even in recent years, many assertions of this sort, and then others rechecked them and found nothing. So for the time being we have to wait and see.
For many months physicists studied the collision of proton-antiproton beams and watched the production of muons – these are a kind of elementary particle. But where these very muons appeared surprised the specialists. The particles were recorded at a considerable distance from the place of the collision. This cannot yet be explained, and the analysis of the information is continuing. And some scientists are already speaking of a possible revolution in physics.