Word: muons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this case, scientists observed the transitory trails of four particles into which a top and its antimatter twin should occasionally decay. Or did they? One clue was the detection of a muon, a close relative of the electron. At least, it appeared to be a muon. The reason scientists aren't sure is that the portion of the detector responsible for tracking muons is segmented like an orange. "And with the malice often displayed by inanimate objects," says University of Chicago physicist Henry Frisch with a sigh, "this muon went right up a crack between the segments...
...history of science is full of similar discoveries, some of which have revolutionized ideas about the universe and many of which turned out to be less than they had seemed. In the former category, for example, is the 1936 discovery of a new particle, the muon, an elementary particle similar to the electron but more massive. Existing theories had predicted no such thing, and its appearance greatly complicated high-energy physics. "Who ordered that?" grumbled theorist I.I. Rabi at the time. But the muon and its kin led eventually to a new understanding of the subatomic world...
Experimental evidence indicates that neutrinos come in three varieties: the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino and the tau neutrino. Solar fusion gives off the electron type. Bahcall and Bethe speculate that electron neutrinos change into the muon or tau versions somewhere between the sun and Earth. "It's as if they started out sweet," marvels Bethe, who won the Nobel Prize in 1967 for explaining how nuclear fusion powers the sun, "and then suddenly turned salty." Thus the Baksan experiment may have come up empty- handed because it was not designed to detect muon or tau neutrinos...