In classical physics, a vacuum is a complete void—a real manifestation of nothingness. However quantum physics says that vacant house isn’t actually empty. As a substitute, it’s buzzing with “digital” particles blipping out and in of existence too rapidly to be detected. Scientists know that these digital particles are there as a result of they measurably tweak the qualities of normal particles.

One key property these effervescent particles change is the miniscule magnetic discipline generated by a single electron, referred to as its magnetic second. In principle, if scientists may account for all of the sorts of digital particles that exist, they might run the mathematics and determine precisely how skewed the electron’s magnetic second must be from swimming on this digital particle pool. With exact sufficient devices, they might test their work towards actuality. Figuring out this worth as precisely as attainable would assist physicists nail down precisely which digital particles are toying with the electron’s magnetic second—a few of which could belong to a veiled sector of our universe, the place, for instance, the ever-elusive dark matter resides. 

In February, 4 researchers at Northwestern College introduced they’d finished simply that. Their results, printed in Bodily Evaluation Letters, report the electron magnetic second with staggering precision: 14 digits previous the decimal level, and greater than twice as actual because the previous measurement in 2008. 

Which may appear to be going overboard. However there’s far more than mathematical accuracy at stake. By measuring the magnetic second, scientists are testing the theoretical linchpin of particle physics: the usual mannequin. Like a physics model of the periodic desk, it’s laid out as a chart of all of the particles identified in nature: the subatomic ones making up matter, like quarks and electrons, and those who carry or mediate forces, like gluons and photons. The mannequin additionally comes with a algorithm for a way these particles behave.

However physicists know the standard model is incomplete—it’s prone to be lacking some parts. Predictions based mostly on the mannequin usually don’t line up with observations of the true universe. It will probably’t clarify key conundrums like how the universe inflated to its present dimension after the Large Bang, and even the way it can exist in any respect—full of matter, and mostly absent of the antimatter that ought to have canceled it out. Nor does the mannequin say something in regards to the dark matter gluing galaxies collectively, or the dark energy spurring cosmic expansion. Maybe its most flagrant flaw is the lack to account for gravity. Extremely exact measurements of identified particles are subsequently key to determining what’s lacking as a result of they assist physicists zero in on gaps in the usual mannequin. 

“The usual mannequin is our greatest description of bodily actuality,” says Gerald Gabrielse, a physicist at Northwestern College who coauthored the brand new examine, in addition to the 2008 consequence. “It’s a extremely profitable principle in that it might probably predict primarily every little thing we will measure and check on Earth—however it will get the universe incorrect.” 

The truth is, probably the most exact prediction the usual mannequin makes is the worth of the electron’s magnetic second. If the expected magnetic second doesn’t match up with what’s seen in experiments, the discrepancy may very well be a clue that there are undiscovered digital particles at play. “I all the time say that nature tells you what equations are appropriate,” says Xing Fan, a physicist at Northwestern College who spearheaded the examine as a Harvard College graduate pupil. “And the one means you’ll be able to check it’s should you examine your principle to the true world.”