Magnetic muon measurements and gene-therapy advances win US$3 million Breakthrough prizes
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David Hertzog and Katherine High were among the winners of this year’s Breakthrough prize.Credit: Dennis R. Wise & Colin Lenton
Researchers dedicated to a decades-long quest to measure the magnetic properties of the subatomic muon particle have won one of this year’s US$3 million Breakthrough prizes. The results seemingly confirm the standard model of particle physics, but team member David Hertzog, a nuclear physicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, says that it is not yet “game over”, with mysteries remaining around why two independent methods used to calculate the model’s predictions disagree drastically. The winners of the awards, some of the most lucrative prizes in science, were announced on 18th April.
Dreams of new physics fade with latest muon magnetism result