WEBVTT - Is Physics as We Know It About to Change? 0:00:02.000 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.400 I'm Lauren Volga BAM, and I'm here to tell you 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:13.360 that something strange is happening above the frozen landscape of Antarctica. 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.480 When scientists launched a science balloon mission called the Antarctic 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.280 Impulsive Transient Antenna or ANITA, over the continent in two 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.160 thousand and six, a cosmic ray pained off of one 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:27.920 of its instruments. That isn't so strange. Cosmic rays fly 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.680 from deep space all the time, and ANITA can detect 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:34.320 them and measure their energies. But on this occasion, the 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.880 cosmic ray didn't come from above. It came from below. 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.440 This high energy particle had emerged from the ice and 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:44.800 traveled upward through the atmosphere. That's not something that cosmic 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:47.879 rays are supposed to do. During another in NEEDA flight 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:52.400 in it happened again. Cosmic rays come from some of 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.920 the most energetic places in the universe supernovas or these 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.360 swirling maws of black holes. To see a cosmic ray 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:02.600 emerge from the Earth suggests that this particle traveled from 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:05.679 deep space and passed right through the planet before emerging 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:09.959 on the other side. According to physics. However, this is impossible. 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.640 Cosmic rays are high energy protons and atomic nuclei, and 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.399 the thing about them is that they have large cross sections. 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.440 In other words, they have no problem interacting with matter. 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:23.319 Should cosmic ray hit the Earth, it should be stopped 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:25.520 in its tracks by the atmosphere, like a bullet hitting 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:28.959 a cinder block. Conversely, we've got another type of particle 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:32.800 called neutrinos. These have very small cross sections, meaning they 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.280 zip through matter as if it weren't even there. Neutrinos 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.320 are so weakly interacting with matter. The twillions of them 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:43.080 passed through our bodies unimpeded every second, but the particles 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:45.880 that are needed. But the particles that are needed detected 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.680 were not neutrinos. They were what appeared to be cosmic rays, 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:52.160 and they passed straight through our planet as if it 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:57.880 weren't even there. Frankly, these cosmic rays are not normal. Now. 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:01.520 Researchers have have revisited these Anita events in a study 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:06.240 submitted in September and founded three similar detections of upward 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:10.000 moving cosmic rays. In another Antarctic experiment called ice Cube, 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:13.200 that's a particle detector that's buried in the ice, and 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:17.000 the researchers have arrived at an astonishing conclusion. These aren't 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:21.200 regular Standard model physics cosmic rays. They could be evidence 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:26.440 of what's called exotic physics. Exotic physics first two physics 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.680 that we don't currently understand, and scientists refer to it 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.919 as physics beyond the Standard Model. The Standard Model is 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:37.079 a recipe book of sorts that explains how subatomic particles 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:41.280 from electrons, two photons, two corks should behave. But when 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:45.160 the Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson in the 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:49.120 particle that endows matter with mass, the Standard Model was complete. 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:53.080 The theoretical framework that describes all interactions down to subatomic 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:58.280 scales had been wrapped up. They're almost there was a problem. 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:01.240 In fact, there were several. The Standard Model does not 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.160 explain what dark matter and dark energy are. It also 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.840 cannot explain why the majority of the universe is made 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:11.640 from matter rather than antimatter. There's also the question of 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.840 neutrino mass. The Standard Model falls short there too. There 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:18.240 are many mysteries that cannot be explained by the Standard 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.360 Model recipe book, so physicists are hard at work trying 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:23.600 to find evidence for a recipe book that governs the 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:28.400 universe in the shadows. Maddeningly, the most complex experiments on 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.240 Earth have yet to find any conclusive evidence of this 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:34.640 shadowy realm and how it works, though there are clues, 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:38.400 and according to the researchers investigating the Anita and ice 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:41.840 cube anomalies, these cosmic ray detections may have opened a 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.160 window into physics beyond the standard model, providing evidence of 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.320 particles that look like cosmic rays and yet don't behave 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:52.600 like cosmic rays. The researchers wrote in their study, under 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.920 conservative extrapolations of these standard model interactions, there's no particle 0:03:56.960 --> 0:03:59.320 that can propagate through the Earth at these energies and 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:03.080 exit ankles. We explore here whether beyond the standard model 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.840 particles are required to explain the Anita events if correctly interpreted, 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:12.080 and conclude that they are. One hypothetical exotic physics recipe 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.440 book that may help explain what's going on is supersymmetry. 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:18.880 This hypothesis suggests that all the particles we know and 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:23.520 love have supersymmetry particles a k a. Sparticles. These sparticles 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.400 would provide balance to these standard models and may explain 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:29.800 some of the mysteries that are confounding physicists and cosmologists. 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.839 Could these phantom cosmic rays actually be a whole different 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.680 type of particle emerging from supersymmetry. It's too early to tell, 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.520 and more data is needed, but it's tantalizing to think 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.159 that we may have accidentally glimpsed physics beyond the standard 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:51.280 model at the most extreme location on Earth. Today's episode 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:53.760 was written by Ian O'Neill and produced by Tyler Clang. 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:56.320 For more on this and lots of other spooky topics, 0:04:56.440 --> 0:05:10.040 visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.