Poems of the Week

A Nuance of Muons

by Barbara Loots

“Tiny particles called muons aren’t quite doing what is expected of them in two different long-running
experiments in the United States and Europe. The confounding results—if proven right—reveal major
problems with the rulebook physicists use to describe and understand how the universe works at the
subatomic level.”

AP

Some misbehaving muons have the physicists concerned:
the Standard Model may not be the end of what we’ve learned.

Higgs boson made a power play to claim the name of God,
but muon doings indicate an outcome rather odd.

Humanity’s predicament may go from bad to worse:
the nuance of the muons could upend the universe.