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New Subatomic Particle Discovered
Cyndi writes "A new subatomic particle has been discovered by researchers at Stanford. It seems to be "an unusual configuration of a charm quark and a strange anti-quark"."
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From the article, it sounds as if this particle would exhibit naked charm (and naked (anti-)strange as well I assume). This seems astounding to me (at a quarter to five AM at least). Last I heard that sort of thing was on mother nature's short list of no-nos.
-- MarkusQ
Could someone explain the who Anti-Quark, Naked Quark, Bio-Polar Quark, Spring Break Quark, and Got my head up my ass CIO Quark please?
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
... does it run linux?
There's tons of different configurations of fundamental particles, especially quarks. Though the people who set up the accelerators and did this must be pretty chuffed, and have indeed contributed to the advancement of particle physics by helping repertoriate more of the possible combinations, there's nothing even remotely interesting to anyone who's not a particle physicist working on this type of quark configuration.
Now if they had discovered a new fundamental particle, or if that particle exhibited properties in contradiction with the current laws of particle physics (eg symmetry breaking), that would be worth posting...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
The combination was not the surprise, but the missing mass is, which suggests that the theoretical calculation of the binding force is incorrect (though such calculation is often an approximation themself) This usually signals that some aspect of the theory on the force is wrong or that their is yet another particle that was undetected, thus robbing some mass away. (Neutrino was 'discovered' this way)
cs
a charm quark with ... an anti strange [quark]
Love makes strange bedfellows...
This force, unlike most others in nature, becomes stronger as the distance between the two quarks increases.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder...
They have discovered the LOVE particle!
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
I prefer Neelix's portrayal of the Grand Proxy in "False Profits"!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
before they discover the evil-bit quark?
Yup. Recycling old jokes ad nauseam.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I kill me.
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by researchers at the University of Fulchester. The element, tentatively named Administratium, has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have 1 neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called morons.
Since it has no electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction it comes in contact with. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium caused one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would have normally occurred in less than one second. Administratium has a normal half-life of approximately three years, at which time it does not actually decay but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. Some studies have shown that the atomic mass actually increases after each reorganisation.
Research at other laboratories indicates that Administratium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate at certain points such as government agencies, large corporations and universities and can usually be found in the newest, best appointed and best maintained buildings.
Scientists point out that Administratium is known to be toxic at any level of concentration and can easily destroy any productive reaction where it is allowed to accumulate. Attempts are being made to determine how Administratium can be controlled to prevent irreversible damage, but results to date are not promising.
Source: http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/science/administratiu
But what happens if you've only got one of them here, and the nearest other one is in a neighboring galaxy? Massive destruction? Infinite attraction? Or just enough attraction to get a geek a date?
This force, unlike most others in nature, becomes stronger as the distance between the two quarks increases.
For the physicists out there, if this forces is true, then what stops somone from developing a device based on it and, say, some electromagetic force (or just plain old gravity) where by each side pushes and pulls in balance so that they actually generate energy.
Like for eample, have a "Ds" particle bolted to the top of a room, and drop a second "Ds" particle directly from it, it would be pulled by gravity until the point where the strange inverted force gets strong enough to pull it back up. As it goes back up, that force diminshes, and then gravity takes over again, etc.
What you suggest is similar to taking a ball, tying a bungee cord around it, and dropping it off a bridge. In the same manner, after a few oscillations, it would simply come to rest at the balance point between the two forces.
Hmm...I really can't tell if you are joking or not. This is never going to happen due to the scale at which these forces work. The strong nuclear force prevents free quarks from being observed. This is called confinement and is due to quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If a enough energy is pumped into a particle composed of quarks, the energy enevtually goes into creating a new quark pair, therefore satifying confinement (no free quarks). The amount of energy to do this is staggering. Think GeV or higher particle accelerator. Any other time the distances over which these forces work (10^-18 m) prevents much of anything being extracted.
Because the definition of a "particle" in this case is completely arbitrary. It's a charm and an antistrange quark in a bound configuration. You can 'imagine' it as the charm and the antistrange orbiting each other (though this isn't strictly true!) There's a 'ground state' for a D_s+, which is like 1970 MeV as I said above. This is an 'excited state'. In particle physics you call excited states new 'particles'.
We know we didn't 'invent' it because a c and an s_bar existed a long time before this guy. We just put them together in a weird way.
I suggest it be renamed the "code-red" particle (as i am drinking that now); the "twinkie" particle; or perhaps even the "Jugs, the magazine for men" particle...
You ***CAN*** do this....
Take a mass and hang it from a spring. This will represent "The (strong) Force". Gravity, as always, will work. You then pull the mass to the floor. The spring pulls it up. When it reaches the ceiling, gravity will pull it down.
All you have to do to make this into perpetual motion is to suck all of the gas from the room, and find a new type of spring with no internal friction losses. It will bounce forever!
Now, getting energy from such a system would cause it to slow down and stop. Feel free to try this experiment if you wish!
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
We should let whoever pays for the research name it.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I tried it, but I think my roommate complained after all the gas was sucked from the room. I'll know more when I can go back in and read the note.