The universe may have changed

A Taiwanese doctoral student at National Taiwan University (NTU) has discovered evidence of a new phenomenon that calls into question a well-accepted theory of the birth of the universe -- the Standard Model of Elementary Particles, and if his evidence is verified it could mean the dawn of a new era of theoretical physics.

In early August, 24-year-old Chen Kai-feng (陳凱風) of NTU's Department of Physics, came to results inconsistent with the Standard Model of Elementary Particles by analyzing raw data from experiments conducted at the particle accelerator at Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba.

"We are 99 percent confident of the appearance of new physical phenomena [that challenges current theory] based on Chen's discovery," NTU physicist Wang Min-zu (王名儒) said at a press conference held at NTU yesterday.

Wang said a new theory would have to be crafted about the formation of the universe, if Chen's discovery is verified.

According to the NTU, Koji Hara, who just received a Ph.D. from Osaka University, also contributed key parts to the achievement.

Hwang Woei-yann (黃偉彥), also a physicist at NTU, said that, in the late 1980s, defects in the Standard Model has triggered scientists to search for evidence supporting "supersymmetry," an attractive theory which provides a connection between all known elementary particles and can simplify many complex interactions.

"Chen's discovery could be the first successful observation of an expression of particles' supersymmetric characteristics," Hwang said.

Taiwan became part of a Japan-based research group known as Belle in 1994. Since then, the National Science Council (NSC) has invested NT$10 million annually on the project.

Working with 300 other physicists from 14 countries at the accelerator laboratory, Taiwan's team led by Hou Wei-shu (侯維恕), also an NTU physics professor, collided particles and anti-particles at high energies to study minute differences between the way matter and antimatter interact.

Chen, a member of Hou's team, yesterday was in Japan to complete some follow-up work on 68 cases of what are called "B meson decays."

"The process of inferring a conclusion from what they observed was quite challenging. But it proved worthwhile" to follow the evidence to its conclusion, Chen said to the media via Web camera.

Representatives of the Belle groups yesterday released the astonishing information at the "Lepton Photon 2003 Conference" at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago.

Hou said a research paper about the discovery would be sent to Physical Review Letters, an academic journal published by the American Physical Society, today.

Chang Ching-ray (張慶瑞), chairman of the Department of Physics at NTU, said Chen was one of the talented high school students who was granted admission. Last year, Chen's master thesis was awarded by the NSC.

Meanwhile, physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California are pursuing the same goal with the Belle groups -- to help people understand the workings of the universe at its largest and smallest scales, from revealing the origin of matter shortly after the Big Bang, to uncovering the secrets of elementary particles and their interaction.