The Top Ten Physics Highlights of 2002

Ocelot Wreak writes "Physics Web has a cool summary of The Top Ten Physics Highlights of 2002. These include anti-atoms, neutrino oscillation - a finding that requires new physics beyond the Standard Model, defying the second law of thermodynamics, and using neutrons to measure quantum gravitational effects, amongst others. For some reason, the Slashdot Effect and the latest research on iPod-based Beowulf clusters were not included..."

Comments

Re:Core memory is back!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

It's called a logic gate. Look it up in a book on basic logic theory. Duh.

Re:But the best news... QWZX

[Draxinusom]

It's not particularly important per se, but the increasing numbers are an indicator that the sciences may be becoming more gender-blind. Unless you believe that there's a gender-inherent reason women don't become physicists, in a truly just world we should see an equal number of male and female physicists; maybe we're (slowly) getting there.

Tetraneutrons may be bogus.

[bcrowell]

I talked to someone I know who's an expert on neutron detection, and he's pretty skeptical about the tetraneutron.

One big problem is that a random coincidence between four neutrons from unrelated events could masquerade as a tetraneutron. The paper says they have the random-coincidence rate all figured out, but it's the kind of thing that is notoriously hard to be sure about.

With any other exotic nuclear species, you can catch it in a metal foil, and then find out stuff about it, e.g., what particles it emits when it decays. The tetraneutron, if it exists, can only be detected by destroying it, which makes it hard to measure any of its properties. If you can't measure any of its properties, it's pretty hard to be sure it's real.