For those that missed it, you can see the recorded talk here: https://youtu.be/LHjHUOrb9p4
More than eighty years after the muon was first discovered, it remains a source of mystery. Fortunately, experiments are underway that use muons as a window to search for new physics — a central goal of the high energy physics community. These efforts build on the tantalizing tension between physics experimentalists and theorists, each trying to determine the muon’s magnetic moment. The theory predicts about three-and-a-half standard deviations difference to the currently observed data, and this disagreement hints towards new, previously misunderstood physics. In particular, the recently started experiment at Fermilab aims to measure the muon’s magnetic moment with exquisite precision of 140 parts per billion, which would reduce the experimental uncertainty by a factor of four. After a brief tour of its history, I will discuss the ongoing interplay between theory and experiment that is essential for revealing one of the remaining unknowns of the universe.