Author: Cassie Martin / Source: Science News
Here’s our short list of discoveries reported in 2018 that could shake up science, if they hold up.
Dangling from a helium balloon high above Antarctica, the ANITA detector spied two odd signals that hint at the existence of new subatomic particles. Such extremely energetic particles, if they exist, could upend the standard model, the theory that describes the elementary particles that make up matter (SN: 10/27/18, p. 8). Some physicists caution that the signals could have come from something more mundane, such as spacefaring particles called cosmic rays.
The first stars in the universe flickered on by about 180 million years after the Big Bang, radio observations suggest (SN: 3/31/18, p. 6). Unexpectedly strong signals, picked up by a table-sized antenna in the Australian outback, hint at the earliest twinklers and what would be a new phenomenon in the early universe: hydrogen particles interacting with dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe.
TABLE SERVICE
Two studies add support for a connection…
The post These 2018 findings could be big news — if they turn out to be true appeared first on FeedBox.