Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!aplcen!jhunix!ins_adsf
From: ins_adsf@jhunix.UUCP (David S Fry)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.research,net.misc
Subject: Re: Fifth force
Message-ID: <1541@jhunix.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Jan-86 23:07:54 EST
Article-I.D.: jhunix.1541
Posted: Thu Jan 23 23:07:54 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jan-86 04:50:36 EST
References: <621@ttidcb.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Johns Hopkins Univ. Computing Ctr.
Lines: 23
Xref: watmath net.physics:3777 net.research:416 net.misc:9210

> 
>         There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times which said
> a  fifth  force  had been discovered.  It is called hypercharge and is
> about 100 times weaker than gravity.  It changes the answer of the old
> question of whether a feather or a iron ball will hit first if dropped
> in a vacuum; the feather hits first as iron has a higher  hypercharge.
> I  have been unable to find any other references to this new force and
> would be interested in reading anything else available on  it.  Is  it
> for real?

	The original paper can be found in Physical Review Letters (I don't
know which issue, but very recently I would assume).  It was inspired by
recent anomalies in data from accelerator labs.  The authors, principally
Ephraim Fischbach, then went back to look at the data from a famous 1922
torsion experiment by Roland von Eotvos.  The force is hypothesized to act
on particles no more than 600 feet apart.

	The theory is certainly "for real", and the paper was actually publ-
ished, but, as Harvard's Sheldon Glashow says, "The work suggests an inter-
esting direction, but by no means should be taken as a real discovery."
(from Time magazine, 1/11/86)

                 			-David Fry