Scientists have discovered "strong evidence" of a new subatomic force of nature.

Scientists have discovered "strong evidence" of a new subatomic force of nature.

Now an international team of scientists working on a project in the united states say that they have discovered strong evidence for the existence of a new force of nature they say that some subatomic particles called moons don't behave in a way predicted by current theories of physics the british funders of the research say that scientists are on the precipice of a new era of physics our science correspondent gauche has the story the theories of modern physics have given scientists a new understanding of how the universe works but the current ideas aren't able to solve some of the biggest scientific puzzles such as how the universe as we know it came into existence.

Now scientists at fermilab a particle accelerator just outside chicago have got a result that might take us a big step forward in answering those questions they've been accelerating particles inside this giant ring close to the speed of light and they found that they might be behaving in a way that can't be explained by the current theory of physics at the subatomic level we found that the interaction of a muon which is a heavy electron with a magnetic field is not in agreement with our current best theory of physics and clearly that's very exciting as it potentially points to a future new laws new particles and new forces in physics which we haven't seen to date you've heard of electrons well there are similar particles called muons which are much heavier and spin like tops in the experiment they were made to wobble using magnets the current theory suggests they should wobble at a certain rate instead they wobbled faster this might be caused by a mystery force that in turn is created by another yet to be discovered particle.

Scientists believe that there are four fundamental forces of nature one for gravity another for electricity and two nuclear forces which control the behavior of atoms together they explain the way the world works but in recent years astronomers began noticing things in space that can't be explained by the four forces such as galaxies spinning faster than they should and they can't explain why the stars and planets and everything on them including us exist at all the new results suggest there might be a fifth force which could explain some of these mysteries i think it's quite mind-boggling and they have the potential to turn physics on its head we have a number of mysteries that remain unsolved and this could give us the key answers to solve those mysteries evidence for the fifth force has been growing just two weeks ago researchers at the large hadron collider just outside geneva had a similar result the race is really on now to try and get one of these experiments to really get the proof that this really is something new they will take more data and make more measurements and hopefully show evidence that these effects are real these very early results aren't definitive yet but they are generating a lot of excitement about the prospect of a giant leap forward in our understanding of the universe palab gauche bbc news.