Axial Higgs Boson discovered... Don't get too excited?

[Macavity]

This caught my eye a couple of days ago! Explanation for Dark Matter etc.
Physicists discover never-before seen particle sitting on a tabletop 🥳

But: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Higgs_boson (I see... I think!) 🙃

P.S. Ooer! https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=12936 😅

Quote

The axial Higgs boson is a collective excitation in a condensed matter system – specifically a rare earth charge density wave system – whose discovery was announced by American researchers in Nature on June 8, 2022.^[1] It should not be confused with a proposed fundamental particle in high energy particle physics.^[2]

Edited June 10, 2022 by Macavity

[Zermelo]

I saw this headine too. It was just the latest in a line of (non-discovery) discovery announcements by condensed matter physicists that seem to be designed to get them into the mainstream publications (and possibly attract future funding).
In each case, the supposed "new particle" is not a particle at all, but some other phenomenon of bulk matter that shares some of its predicted properties.

Other examples: the "discoveries" of the magnetic monopole and the first Majorana fermion.

[Ratlet]

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

I saw this headine too. It was just the latest in a line of (non-discovery) discovery announcements by condensed matter physicists that seem to be designed to get them into the mainstream publications (and possibly attract future funding).
In each case, the supposed "new particle" is not a particle at all, but some other phenomenon of bulk matter that shares some of its predicted properties.

Other examples: the "discoveries" of the magnetic monopole and the first Majorana fermion.

I'm 90% certain that many physical chemistry departments used to (might still do) tack on things like 'potential to revoloutionise superconductors' onto announcements to make them look better.  There would be no chance that it would, but they couldn't rule it out completely, so there was some (small) potential.

[Macavity]

2 hours ago, Zermelo said:

I saw this headine too. It was just the latest in a line of (non-discovery) discovery announcements by
condensed matter physicists [snip!] ... Majorana fermion.

A weird one - But I do rather agree on this! 🤫

Without ref., I would have called it a "Quasiparticle"? Such things are/were traditionally
a useful device for explaining many Physical phenomena? I once spoke of Pomerons! lol.
I DID learn Psuedoparticle applies to Fermions - Bosons are... "Collective Excitations"?!? 😏

Edited June 11, 2022 by Macavity