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The universe is controlled, held together and pushed apart by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, as well as strong and weak nuclear forces.



Now, physicists in Hungary believe they found more evidence to open the discussion of whether there is, in fact, a fifth force of nature, which would force us to rethink our understanding of the universe and how it works.

The fifth force could also potentially help researchers explain and spot dark matter, which is theorized to account for 85 per cent of the universe.

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In 2015, evidence of a fifth force was first spotted by Hungarian physicists, in the radioactive decay of beryllium. Now, the same group has spotted a second example of this fifth force in an experiment involving helium, to go along with the particle they believe is carrying it.They’ve called the particle X17.

In 2015, Attila Krasznahorkay and his colleagues at the Institute for Nuclear Research (Atomki) in Hungary started by firing protons at the isotope lithium-7, creating an excited beryllium-8, an unstable isotope, in an effort to analyze how it would emit light as it decays.