Project description
Confirming "weakness" in the Standard Model
Scientific discovery is much more often the result of carefully thought-out hypotheses and theoretical and experimental investigations rather than a serendipitous "aha" observation. Even Isaac Newton's purported apple event more likely led to years of consideration, culminating in his first published paper on the topic of gravity nearly 20 years later. When it comes to particle physics, it is futile to wait and hope for an "aha" moment – discovery is technically difficult even with the best-laid plans. Rather than leaving discovery to chance, the EU-funded NEPAL project is laying the foundations for the analysis of data from the latest experiment designed to make precise measurements of the weak interaction, challenging the half-century-old Standard Model of particle physics.