Is Physics as We Know It About to Change?

Newly researched cosmic rays seem to behave differently than the laws of physics say they should. Learn how this could help us fill in some blanks about our universe in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
I'm Lauren Volga BAM, and I'm here to tell you
that something strange is happening above the frozen landscape of Antarctica.
When scientists launched a science balloon mission called the Antarctic
Impulsive Transient Antenna or ANITA, over the continent in two
thousand and six, a cosmic ray pained off of one

(00:24):
of its instruments. That isn't so strange. Cosmic rays fly
from deep space all the time, and ANITA can detect
them and measure their energies. But on this occasion, the
cosmic ray didn't come from above. It came from below.
This high energy particle had emerged from the ice and
traveled upward through the atmosphere. That's not something that cosmic

(00:44):
rays are supposed to do. During another in NEEDA flight
in it happened again. Cosmic rays come from some of
the most energetic places in the universe supernovas or these
swirling maws of black holes. To see a cosmic ray
emerge from the Earth suggests that this particle traveled from
deep space and passed right through the planet before emerging

(01:05):
on the other side. According to physics. However, this is impossible.
Cosmic rays are high energy protons and atomic nuclei, and
the thing about them is that they have large cross sections.
In other words, they have no problem interacting with matter.
Should cosmic ray hit the Earth, it should be stopped
in its tracks by the atmosphere, like a bullet hitting
a cinder block. Conversely, we've got another type of particle

(01:29):
called neutrinos. These have very small cross sections, meaning they
zip through matter as if it weren't even there. Neutrinos
are so weakly interacting with matter. The twillions of them
passed through our bodies unimpeded every second, but the particles
that are needed. But the particles that are needed detected
were not neutrinos. They were what appeared to be cosmic rays,

(01:50):
and they passed straight through our planet as if it
weren't even there. Frankly, these cosmic rays are not normal. Now.
Researchers have have revisited these Anita events in a study
submitted in September and founded three similar detections of upward
moving cosmic rays. In another Antarctic experiment called ice Cube,

(02:10):
that's a particle detector that's buried in the ice, and
the researchers have arrived at an astonishing conclusion. These aren't
regular Standard model physics cosmic rays. They could be evidence
of what's called exotic physics. Exotic physics first two physics
that we don't currently understand, and scientists refer to it
as physics beyond the Standard Model. The Standard Model is

(02:33):
a recipe book of sorts that explains how subatomic particles
from electrons, two photons, two corks should behave. But when
the Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson in the
particle that endows matter with mass, the Standard Model was complete.
The theoretical framework that describes all interactions down to subatomic
scales had been wrapped up. They're almost there was a problem.

(02:58):
In fact, there were several. The Standard Model does not
explain what dark matter and dark energy are. It also
cannot explain why the majority of the universe is made
from matter rather than antimatter. There's also the question of
neutrino mass. The Standard Model falls short there too. There
are many mysteries that cannot be explained by the Standard
Model recipe book, so physicists are hard at work trying

(03:21):
to find evidence for a recipe book that governs the
universe in the shadows. Maddeningly, the most complex experiments on
Earth have yet to find any conclusive evidence of this
shadowy realm and how it works, though there are clues,
and according to the researchers investigating the Anita and ice
cube anomalies, these cosmic ray detections may have opened a

(03:41):
window into physics beyond the standard model, providing evidence of
particles that look like cosmic rays and yet don't behave
like cosmic rays. The researchers wrote in their study, under
conservative extrapolations of these standard model interactions, there's no particle
that can propagate through the Earth at these energies and
exit ankles. We explore here whether beyond the standard model

(04:03):
particles are required to explain the Anita events if correctly interpreted,
and conclude that they are. One hypothetical exotic physics recipe
book that may help explain what's going on is supersymmetry.
This hypothesis suggests that all the particles we know and
love have supersymmetry particles a k a. Sparticles. These sparticles

(04:23):
would provide balance to these standard models and may explain
some of the mysteries that are confounding physicists and cosmologists.
Could these phantom cosmic rays actually be a whole different
type of particle emerging from supersymmetry. It's too early to tell,
and more data is needed, but it's tantalizing to think
that we may have accidentally glimpsed physics beyond the standard
model at the most extreme location on Earth. Today's episode

(04:51):
was written by Ian O'Neill and produced by Tyler Clang.
For more on this and lots of other spooky topics,
visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.