Scientists are sometimes asked if they do new experiments in the lab or if they just keep doing the same ones over and over again because they know what the results will be. Most scientists do the first, but scientific progress also depends on doing the second and making sure that what we think we know is still true in light of new information.
In new tests, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) looked at the structure and properties of silicon, which has been studied a lot. The results shed light on a likely place to find the “fifth force.” A news release says that this may help us learn more about how nature works.
Simply put, we only need three dimensions of space—north-south, east-west, and up-down—and one dimension of time—past-future—to make sense of the world. In his theory of gravity, Albert Einstein said that mass changes the size of space and time.
The BBC’s Science Focus says that in the 1920s, Oskar Klein and Theodor Kaluza came up with the five-dimensional hypothesis to explain the forces of nature. At the time, gravity was the only electromagnetic force that was known.
But the discovery of strong and weak nuclear forces pushed Klein and Kaluza’s idea forward. This idea was then combined with electromagnetic forces to make the Standard Model, which explains most, but not all, things that happen in nature.
As physicists look to the String Theory to explain why gravity is so weak, the idea of a huge fifth dimension keeps coming back up. This may also explain why there is dark matter.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) bombarded silicon with neutrons and measured the intensity, angles, and intensities of these particles to learn more about its crystalline structure.
As neutrons move through the crystalline structure, they create standing waves between and on top of the atom rows or sheets. When these waves hit each other, they make small patterns called pendellosung oscillations. These patterns tell us about the forces that neutrons meet inside the structure.
Each force is carried out by particles whose range is inversely related to how much mass they have.
So, a particle with no mass, like a photon, has an infinite range, and the same is true for a particle with mass. By limiting how far a force can reach, you can also limit how much power it has. Recent tests have shown that the strength of the hypothetical fifth force is limited to a range of lengths from 0.02 to 10 nanometers. This gives us a range to look for the fifth dimension in which this force works.
More research in this area could soon lead to the discovery of the fifth dimension, and for the first time in schools, physics professors would have to figure out how to explain an abstract idea, just like their students.