Article: Physicists find muons bemusing: puzzling results may signify mystery particle or new force.(Matter & Energy)(Brief article)

Physicists are puzzling over a bunch of measly muons. In experiments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., researchers have detected too many muons where there should be hardly any.

Muons are heavy cousins of electrons. Most physicists believe a mundane explanation exists for the muons' aberrant location in this experiment. But there's a chance, even if slim, that the muon detections indicate the existence of some new, long-lived elementary particle and perhaps a previously unknown force. Such a finding could revolutionize the understanding of the universe, says Mark Kruse of Duke University in Durham, N.C.

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