However, they needed the Brookhaven 50-foot magnetic separation line to run the experiment. And so in 2013 the Magnet embarked on a 3,200-mile odyssey, mostly by barge, along the east coast, around Florida and up the Mississippi, then by truck via Illinois to Batavia, the home of Fermilab.
Resembling a flying saucer, the magnet attracted attention as it was driven south over Long Island at 10 mph. “I went with and talked to people about the science we were doing,” wrote Dr. Polly. “It stayed in a Costco parking lot for over one night. Well over a thousand people came out to see it and hear about the science. “
The experiment began in 2018 with a more intense muon beam and the goal of compiling 20 times as much data as the Brookhaven version.
In 2020, a group of 170 experts known as the Muon g-2 Theory Initiative published a new consensus value for the theoretical value of the muon’s magnetic moment based on three-year workshops and calculations using the Standard Model. That answer compounded the original discrepancy that Brookhaven reported.
Aida X. El-Khadra, a physicist at the University of Illinois and co-chair of the Muon g-2 Theory Initiative, was reached by phone on Monday, two days before the announcement, and said they had waited a long time for this result.
“I’ve never felt like I’m on hot coals,” she said.
On the day Fermilab announced, another group that used a technique known as lattice computation to compute the muon’s magnetic moment received a different response than Dr. El-Khadra and added a new indication of uncertainty to the procedure.
“Yes, we claim that there is no discrepancy between the Standard Model and the Brookhaven result, no new physics,” said Zoltan Fodor of Pennsylvania State University, one of the authors of a report published in Nature on Wednesday, in an interview.
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