Unknown "fifth force" on the brink of being discovered?

[Minas Tirith]

This caught my attention a few weeks ago:

http://www.businessinsider.com/fifth-force-of-nature-could-unlock-the-dark-universe-2016-8

Since it's not being discussed here: Is it an old hat? Discussed elsewhere? Disinfo?

There’s gravity and electromagnetism, and then the lesser known weak and nuclear forces.

But a group of theoretical physicists at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) thinks there might just be a fifth fundamental force lurking in the shadows.

“The four known forces have very obvious jobs holding our universe together,” Jonathan Feng, one of the study’s authors, told Business Insider. “That’s how we discovered them. Gravity holds the planets in orbit around the sun. You see electricity and magnetism in lightning and magnets. The role of this force is going to be much more subtle. If it weren’t, we would have found it a long time ago.”

M.T.

 

[Palinurus]

SOTT carried two articles this year about something similar:

https://www.sott.net/article/319021-Hungarian-physicists-possibly-found-evidence-of-a-mysterious-fifth-force-of-nature

https://www.sott.net/article/325448-US-physicists-say-possible-5th-force-of-nature-discovered