Hungarian physicists have claimed to have discovered the fifth element, it has been reported.
Physicists think they may have discovered a fifth force of nature, and if this is true, then it would totally redefine how people understand the universe, according to Science World Report.
One of physics' most straightforward fundamentals is that everything in the universe is controlled by four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetic force, and weak and strong nuclear forces. However, if physicists in Hungary are correct, this most "straightforward" of all aspects of physics may not be straightforward at all.
New research has emerged and suggests that there could be a fifth natural force that has yet to be discovered.
Nature News initially reported that physicists from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, led by Attila Krasznahorkay, published a research paper last year claiming that there are irregularities in radioactive decay which could be hints of another force at play.
During the research on a possibility of "dark photons", as a cause of dark matter, the team fired protons at a thin strip of lithium. The positive charge overload changed the lithium into an unstable version of beryllium, which underwent the radioactive decay, as expected.
But when the lithium was attacked with protons at angle of 140 degrees, the number of protons and electrons discharged was more than what the researchers expected.
This made Krasznahorkay and his team conclude that the excess subatomic particles are being emitted by a new particle, 34 times heavier than the electron, which suggests there's an undiscovered force at work.
Even though Krasznahorkay's paper was published last year, it didn't receive any recognition until physicist Jonathan Feng and his team of researchers at the University of California got their hands on it. When Feng and his team analyzed the experiment and its setup, they were not able to find anything wrong with Krasznahorkay's conclusion.
The U.S. physicists determined that the never-before-observed boson could be carrying and utilizing an undiscovered fifth fundamental force. When members of the scientific community read about the team's conclusion, they started buzzing with interest and excitement, according to reports.
Since the paper has not yet underwent peer-review, the interest and excitement are changed with restraint and a little bit of hesitation and doubt.
However, the good thing about it is that the paper has already been uploaded, so other physicists will be able to analyze the results and can further add their individual findings to the theory that the fifth force of nature has been discovered.
In addition, and not surprisingly, physicists all over the world are also vying to recreate the Hungarian experiment and do follow-up tests of their own to verify or disprove the results.
Read more here.