A hypothetical “fifth power” may tug on asteroids, if it exists. However the asteroid Bennu exhibits no indicators that its orbit has been tweaked by such a power. That units a ceiling on how robust a possible fifth power may very well be, physicists report September 20 in Communications Physics.
Scientists know of 4 forces within the universe: electromagnetism, gravity and the robust and weak nuclear forces. However some scientists suspect a fifth power would possibly exist. For one factor, a fifth power would possibly assist clarify a serious unsolved physics puzzle: the identification of the unknown supply of mass all through the universe often known as darkish matter.
So scientists are on the hunt for unknown forces. And Bennu is a very appropriate goal, physicist Yu-Dai Tsai and colleagues realized. The asteroid’s trajectory was monitored intently by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which collected a pattern of the asteroid and returned it to Earth in 2023 (SN: 2/15/24). “Bennu has been tracked with astonishing accuracy for an prolonged time frame in order that even slight deviations from its predicted path may present proof for brand new physics,” says Tsai, of Los Alamos Nationwide Laboratory in New Mexico.
In physics, forces go hand in hand with particles that transmit the power. For instance, photons, particles of sunshine, mediate electromagnetism. If a fifth power exists, its corresponding particles may play the position of darkish matter. The Bennu knowledge allowed scientists to seek for a fifth power related to particles which can be very mild, maybe a millionth of a trillionth of an electron volt. (For comparability, an electron has a mass of round 500,000 electron volts.)
Measurements of further asteroids may assist scientists broaden the search to cowl a spread of potential lots. So whereas returned house rocks from Bennu can inform us in regards to the matter making up objects in our photo voltaic system, its trajectory, and that of asteroids prefer it, may inform us about matter’s darkish aspect.
