Brookhaven Probing Unknown Form of Matter (Maybe)

boowax writes "The New York Times (free registration required) reports that there may be a new type of matter according to researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. This apparently has come from interpretation of data gathered from work with muons and discrepancies between predicted wobble and the actual affect. Their are doubters though, who claim that the difference comes from problems with the calculations used for prediction and not a separate form of matter."

Comments

Re:Huh

[Mt._Honkey]

Yes, it's flimsy for now. Note this:

Theorists who are not involved in the research, but whose computational results must be used to interpret it, have recently uncovered errors and uncertainties in their own work. For that reason, the Brookhaven experimenters say they are not ready to claim they have proved a new form of matter exists.

They aren't claiming anything yet. They have something that MIGHT point to this new matter. And they're not just pulling this out of their asses either. Supersymetry theory claims that each matter particle has a corresponding "supersymetric" particle, a kind of a shadow particle. squarks, sleptons and the like are expected by this theory. Of course, this is just one of a few theories trying to supplement or overthrow the standard model, and has not nearly been proven.

Don't make snide comments at people who are releasing experimental data without a conclusion. Right now, all they're saying is that they are measuring a .6 wobbles/sec difference from what they expected, that's it. They aren't claiming anything else yet. Eventually they will either make such a claim when they have enough solid data, or they will drop it due to lack of information or because they believe it is false.

Re:hurry up before the budget runs out

[FredGray]

Meanwhile, the experimenters have a more immediate worry: the Bush administration has decided to end their financing after this year.

The situation is a little more complicated that that. The President's budget did cut all funding through the Dept. of Energy for high-energy physics running at the Brookhaven AGS. This affects at least one other current experiment besides ours.

The House did not add any of this funding back into their version of the budget. There are credible rumours that the Senate will add $50 million to the Dept. of Energy Office of Science budget in their version, which could conceivably be directed to Brookhaven. So, there's still a reasonable hope for additional data-taking this fiscal year.