A new force of nature at the LHC?

At the end of March 2021, scientists working on the LHCb experiment at CERN in Geneva reported an unusual discrepancy in their data that caused huge excitement in the physics community and beyond. They looked at a decade of information about how unstable particles called B mesons decayed into electrons and muons. Our current theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, predicts equal numbers of electrons and muons, but the results showed fewer muons being produced than electrons. Is this just a cruel trick of the data, or could this be the first sign of a new force of nature?

Join LHCb physicists Paula Alvarez Cartelle and Harry Cliff and theoretical physicist Ben Allanach as they explain how they achieved this surprising result, discuss the potentially huge implications for our understanding of the world and reveal if this means we are finally about to see what lies beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics.