Hooray for Escape Velocity! My brother and I played that (alongside Lode Runner: The Legend Returns and Sim Tower) extensively growing up, and I remember excitedly awaiting the release of Nova. Though I probably spent the most time in Nova (especially after finding the TCs for the original and Override). And similarly, I've never met anyone since then who has played it.
If my whole home server setup went up in a fire, one of the things which would worry me most would be losing all the mods, cracks (since Ambrosia is long since defunct), tools, and original installers for EV.
I admit I'm taking your joke a little too seriously - Dr. Hossenfelder's misguided crusade against particle physics has made me sensitive to this - but this isn't so much a new particle as it is testing a prediction of quantum theory against experimental results and confirming 20 years of discrepancy. Amusingly, the reason they're getting excited now is because they're getting closer to refining the calculation to a 5σ difference from theory - in other words, they already knew it was potentially new physics, and this is trying to confirm it.
I recommend the PBS Space Time video if you want a thorough (if a bit technical) explanation, or Fermilab's which breaks it out a bit more simply.