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Tetraneutron Discovered
Caid Raspa writes "According to this
Press Release the French have (accidentally) produced six nuclei of tetraneutron (nucleus with four neutrons and no protons). Theoreticians have previously thought that tetraneutron does not exist. As there is no electric charge in these nuclei, they allow better studies of the nuclear forces. The scientific article is also available at
arXiv.org."
This was a big concern when the Large Hadron Collider was about to go into action. Some feared that the energies would be high enough to create mini black holes, which would promptly fall out of the chamber and begin eating the Earth. Eventually someone realized that higher energy collisions from cosmic rays take place above the Earth every day, and we haven't gotten eaten, yet.
In other words, whatever we can do is already being done in that great laboratory in the sky. Literally in the sky - a few hundred miles over our heads.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
One recurring theme is where you cross the line between quantum and classical behavior. How many Fe atoms to you need before it behaves like the Iron we all are familiar with.
This appears to be another case. At some point of glomming neutrons together you get a neutron star, though that's still an odd beast. Where do you cross the line between Tetra/Penta/Hexa-neutrons and a teeny-tiny neutron star? (I suspect this one's easy to figure, in terms balancing gravity against residual strong and weak forces, but I don't know how to do it.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
No... (and I know penicillin was found, not really created, but my point stands)
I see no problem with 'creating' forms of matter, accidentally or on purpose, particularly as it can be argued that, like penicillin, these forms aren't really being created but are being discovered. They might exist elsewhere in the universe, or might have existed. And they're not really making new forms of matter - they're taking matter that already exists (neutrons) and putting them together in a way they haven't seen before (tetraneutrons). Kinda like molding sugar into cubes.
-T