Scientists Studying “Trickster” Asteroid Make Surprising Discovery That Hints at Fifth Eternal Force of Physics – The Debrief

Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists may have isolated the long-sought “fifth force” in physics with the help of data collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission from a mysterious “detector” of the asteroid Bennu.

When the mission returned samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 2023, it returned with physical material and a wealth of valuable data about the asteroid. The analysis of these facts has now led to the recognition of a potential fifth force that can increase alongside gravity, electricity, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force in the standard model of physics.

Planetary protection is a key mission of NASA, and the space station regularly tracks near-Earth objects such as asteroid Bennu, a space object that scientists have dubbed the “trickster asteroid” because of the surprising things it revealed during its study.

Ground-based systems monitored Bennu before and during the OSIRIS-REx mission. This data goes back to the discovery of the asteroid in 1999, and surprisingly, its path does not match what would be expected by the standard model of physics.

“Deciphering what we see from Bennu has the potential to add to our understanding of the fundamentals of the universe, potentially changing our understanding of the Standard Model of physics, gravity and dark matter. ,” said Yu-Dai Tsais the lead author on the paper that shows the discovery. “The path of matter often has differences that can help discover new physics.”

It is clear that this is not the first time that something unusual has been noticed by scientists that leads to an important discovery of the universe. Shortly before Neptune was discovered, scientists suggested that such a planet must exist based on the unusual orbit of the planet Uranus. An analysis of the data available at the time led to the conclusion that another planet must exist in our solar system, as the unusual features that Uranus exhibited were they are similar to what would be expected for the gravity of another planet.

Recently, the Los Alamos team behind the Bennu study also analyzed the data to “force” a possible fifth force. In other words, they noticed how the path of the asteroid deviated from the expected path of the standard model. They say, what is revealed in the information points to the effects of a possible fifth force.

Sunny Vagnozzi, an assistant professor at the University of Trento in Italy and a co-author on the paper, said: “The solid constraints we reached easily translate into some of the most stringent limits of the fifth-order force Yukawa.” “These results highlight the potential of asteroid tracking as a valuable tool in the search for ultralight bosons, dark matter, and several well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model.”

Physicists still have a serious problem identifying the fifth force. Another possibility that is being considered is that the ultralight boson component may be a fifth energy and extend the standard model to include dark matter and energy. Current theories believe that as much as 85 percent of the matter and energy in the universe may be dark matter, but those particles and energy are still undiscovered. Although observations point in this direction, dark matter and energy have yet to fit into the overall plan.

The team’s next target is Apophis, an asteroid expected to pass close to Earth in 2029. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will also investigate the asteroid and provide valuable data. The team will analyze those data together with the observations of the impact of the Earth on Apophis, which will help to continue their research on the possible role that the fifth part of physics I play.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He has a BA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be reached at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.