I have a number of physics blogs, with different themes. This one might be regarded as a "phenomenology" blog - it's the most empirically driven, in the sense that here I muse about how to account for things like the dark sector, neutrino properties, and the latest particle physics anomalies. Elsewhere, I focus on more theoretical topics, on standard-model numerology, and so on.
At the moment there's a sufficient build-up of new empirical issues, that I feel the need to talk about it here. Muon magnetic moment and B-meson decay anomalies have made news lately, and an elementary review of dark matter evidence reminded me that there's more than galactic rotation curves and the third CMB peak to account for. (While I think of them, let's also remember baryogenesis and the cosmological lithium problem.)
The particle physics anomalies may eventually go away entirely - the B-meson decays might be an error or a fluctuation, and as for muon magnetic moment, maybe we were just doing the theory calculations wrong. If one views the anomalies as real and seeks a neo-minimalist explanation, maybe a leptoquark scalar or two would be best. And if I were seeking explanations that match my theoretical proclivities, perhaps I'd look for flavor gauge bosons related to the Sumino mechanism and to the embedding of the weak force in holographic QCD.
But while I think things through, I have to note the terrible loss of Marni Sheppeard. She has been a constant presence in my thinking about physics - I cited her in the post just before this one! In a better world, she would still be here, and suggesting her unique perspectives on these new measurements.
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