2021’s Biggest Breakthroughs in Physics

Considering the dire reality of yet another Covid-19 year, it’s refreshing to consider that the world is still progressing within various fields. May it bring a smile to your face to ponder some of 2021’s biggest breakthroughs in physics.

• Physicists at Fermilab discovered possible evidence of new physics with the muon G-2 experiment. The results were announced based on an experiment designed specifically to identify an anomaly involving the intrinsic magnetism of a particle called the muon. They found that the experimental value differs from the predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics by a wide margin (then 3.4 sigma, now 4.2 sigma), confirming an anomaly first hinted at in 2001. The result suggests that there might be an 18th fundamental particles that we don’t yet know about, or new physical laws at play that we have yet to discover/describe.
  

• Physicists created a time crystal, a new phase of matter that appears to violate the the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The time crystal was first conceived (in a slightly different form) in 2012, would flip back and forth between two distinct states forever, with no energy lost or gained(!) A laser triggers the change, but the time crystal does not absorb any net energy from the laser. This summer, researchers announced that they had finally created it using one of Google’s quantum computers. In doing so, they forged a novel phase of matter, the first out-of-equilibrium phase, and the first object to spontaneously break time-translation symmetry.
  
  
• An enormous pair of bubbles filled with hot gas towering the center of the pancake shaped Milky Way was observed for the first time. This was identified using an X-ray based space telescope, e-ROSITA. The finding confirmed a theory first posed by a Japanese physicist in the 1960s. These giant structures have a diameter of 50 000 light years, and seem to be constantly expanding, and seems to have emerged some 15-20 million years ago. What made this happen may have been Sagittarius A-star, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It is mostly quiet now, but long ago it could have a cloud of hot gas, shooting out energy in both directions with the force of 100 000 supernovas.