Scientists May Have Discovered A Fifth Force Of Nature

On August 15th 2016, a group of scientists announced that they may have discovered a fifth force of nature. The discovery was made by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, when they were going over data from a Hungarian study that was done in 2015. Physicists from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences were able to isolate an anomaly that appeared to indicate the presence a of particle of light that was 30 times heavier than an electron.

In the Hungarian Academy of Sciences experiment the physicists fired protons at an atom of lithium. This caused the lithium atom to transmute from a litium-7 atom into a beryllium-8 atom. When the beryllium atom shed the extra proton, it emitted a photon that quickly decayed into an electron, positron pair. Repeated collisions revealed that the particle being released from the beryllium-8 atom had a higher release angle and electron volt energy than a normal photon.

The University of California researchers believe that the Hungarian team may have discovered what is being called a "dark photon." This would be evidence of the presence of dark matter, which scientists believe makes up 85% of the universe. They further believe that this new particle may help them to understand the other four forces which are electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force, and gravity.