In physics, there are four fundamental forces of nature: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear. If you're thinking that they're water, air and so on, you didn't pay attention in science class. Those are classical elements. What may be changing is the addition of a fifth fundamental force of nature that recetly published journal in the Physical Review Letters by theoretical physicists at the University of California, Irvine.
"If true, it's revolutionary," exclaims Jonathan Feng, professor of physics & astronomy. "If confirmed by further experiments, this discovery of a possible fifth force would completely change our understanding of the universe, with consequences for the unification of forces and dark matter."
You can imagine that Neil deGrasse Tyson is being asked about this
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"They simply saw an excess of events that indicated a new particle, but it was not clear to them whether it was a matter particle or a force-carrying particle."
UCI looked over the data as well as other similar experiments on the subject and found evidence that cancels out both matter particles and the dark protons that they were looking for. This led them to propose that there could be a new fundamental force. In the journal published by UCI in late-april, analysis co-author Timothy Tait, professor of physics & astronomy, said, "There's no other boson that we've observed that has this same characteristic. Sometimes we also just call it the 'X boson,' where 'X' means unknown."
"The particle is not very heavy, and laboratories have had the energies required to make it since the '50s and '60s," Feng added. "But the reason it's been hard to find is that its interactions are very feeble. That said, because the new particle is so light, there are many experimental groups working in small labs around the world that can follow up the initial claims, now that they know where to