Oh, there’s been talk about some sort of “fifth force” or another for ages, ever since the first four were discovered. The one I remember getting most press was the Cosmological Constant, or (as it’s now known) Dark Energy. That’s been pretty conclusively proven to be real, but nowadays, it’s viewed as just a different manifestation of gravity, not a separate thing.
We already have one. You’re on it. What do you want another one for?
Yeah, me too. That one had to do with reanalysing the results of the Eotvos experiments, I think.
So scientists finally watched The Fifth Element.
May the Fifth Force be with you!
Say that three times fast.
Dr. Franklin Furst discovers fifth force first.
Half Man Half Wit covered the story well, but a few things to add, for what it’s worth…
The particular anomaly seen is hard to blame on nuclear complications given its signature. But there are plenty of other things to blame it on. I read the experimental paper, and even ignoring the group’s history, I did not come away with a warm fuzzy feeling. Every other paragraph left me with a question about their methods. Maybe all those questions would have satisfactory answers, but my skepticism meter is pretty well pegged.
The Irvine group has done a nice job coming up with new physics that can explain this signal while evading limits implied by past data, but that’s a testament to their cleverness rather than a support of the experimental anomaly itself.
I think there’s the repeatability issue. Real science says they have to be able to recreate the experiment and get the same result. But this experiment requires quite a bit of time and resources. So let’s say they repeat the experiment in 2018. At that point, if they get the same result, they’ll have confirmation and they can retroactively say that what happened in 2016 was a genuine discovery.