New 'Mystery Meson' Sub-Atomic Particle Discovered

securitas writes "The BBC reports that scientists in Japan have discovered a new sub-atomic particle that defies current theories of matter and energy. The 'mystery meson' X(3872) was revealed while studying beauty quarks at the KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organization Tsukuba meson factory. 'It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before it decays into other longer-lived, more familiar particles.' Scientists say the lifespan 'is nearly an eternity for a sub-atomic particle this heavy' and may require a change in current theory. Possible explanations for this include the particle being comprised of two quarks and two antiquarks, instead of the usual one-one pairing. More explanation and illustrations at KEK."

Comments

The Standard Model

[MAXOMENOS]

Do we know whether this particle violates the Standard Model? Because if it does, that could mean a real revolution in Physics.

Re:The Standard Model

[Popadopolis]

I believe that the article said that it might violate the standard model. If it does, than the discovery will be bigger than quarks (no joke!)!

Re:The Standard Model

[Jon Erikson]

No, they think it is most likely to be a combination of four quarks - charm/anti-charm and up/anti-up. This hasn't been seen before but is perfectly valid under the standard model... they've already seen pentaquark states after all.

Re:The Standard Model

[EricWright]

From the press release:

However, as its name implies, the X(3872) particle is peculiar in that it does not easily fit into any known particle scheme and, as a result, has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the world's physics community.

I'd say the Standard Model would fall under "any known particle scheme"... so yes, if their results are real and reproducable, this particle would violate the Standard Model.

Re:The Standard Model

[darkstar949]

According to the articals the particle doesn't violate the Standard Model, however, the current Standard Model will need a change to allow for this particle. Of course it should be noted that the Standard Model is a patch-work affair based on observation with out much understanding of how everything fits together and as such will still don't know how everything works.

Re:The Standard Model

[Popadopolis]

It was verified by the Fermi National Partical Accelerator Lab.

Its discovery was recently confirmed by researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, US, home of the Tevatron, the world's largest atom smasher. It was the US outfit that gave X(3872) its mystery tag.

Re:The Standard Model

[Jesrad]

AFAIK the Standard Model does not predict accurately the spin of protons.

Re:The Standard Model

[fireboy1919]

I tend to go for the "we're spewing particles out of an accelerator just to see what happens and looking at the results in a roundabout way to extrapolate the existence of particles."

The methods themselves are not questionable, but extrapolation such as this can easily lead to errors in conclusions drawn.

Re:The Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we know whether this particle violates the Standard Model?

I don't know about that, but I'm sure it violates the DMCA and the Patriotic Act...

Re:The Standard Model

[yourmom16]

Thats muons, not protons.

Re:The Standard Model

[Tackhead]

> No, they think it is most likely to be a combination of four quarks - charm/anti-charm and up/anti-up. This hasn't been seen before but is perfectly valid under the standard model... they've already seen pentaquark states after all.

Pentaquark, fine, but four quarks?! Time to reinvent QCD. *shudder*

Re:The Standard Model

[dnoyeb]

I don't think its a violation. Just an unknown implementation. This implementation could add new information to their model which may indeed cause some changes in theory. Perhaps I'm being pedantic. But when all is not known, its hard to call anything a violation.

Re:The Standard Model

[superdan2k]

The standard model is pretty well fucked anyway. It's not a revolution, it's a kick in the ass that's going to force us to re-examine a large amount of our basic assumptions/research done in the Standard Model.

Already outstanding issues include pentaquarks (5-quark exotic baryons), the inability to find the Higgs boson (not so much finding it, but having the found mass be correct), muon g-factor anomalies, and kaon decay, to name but a few.

I guess what I'm saying is: it's going to be a long time. Don't hold your breath.

Re:The Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. A pentaquark state is a triplet plus a quark-antiquark pair. This is two quark-antiquark pairs. No need to change QCD at all. Why do you think there is?

Re:The Standard Model

[azaris]

I tend to go for the "we're spewing particles out of an accelerator just to see what happens and looking at the results in a roundabout way to extrapolate the existence of particles."

Extrapolate how? Looking at the results there appears to be an unaccounted-for mass concentration present in the reaction. If it's not a new type of particle then what? The evidence is there, now the task is to find an explanation for the phenomena.

The methods themselves are not questionable, but extrapolation such as this can easily lead to errors in conclusions drawn.

I think you are the one doing the erroneous extrapolation.

Re:The Standard Model

[geoffspear]

Why would a model need to change to allow for something which doesn't violate the unchanged model? You're contradicting yourself. Either the current model allows for the new information or it doesn't. If it does, it doesn't need to be changed.

Re:The Standard Model

[Tackhead]

> Not at all. A pentaquark state is a triplet plus a quark-antiquark pair. This is two quark-antiquark pairs. No need to change QCD at all. Why do you think there is?

Sure, quark-antiquark pairs are fine (mesons). Triplets are fine (baryons). And Pentaquarks are (anti :-)strange, but fine (u,u,d,d,!s).

My "WTF happened to QCD" was in regards to a comment implying that X(3872) was a four-quark static configuration, which I thought was unkosher.

Did someone find the Jaffe tetraquark or hexaquark and I've just been in a cave for the past decade? :) It's been a long time since I seriously studied any of this, and most of the papers I just googled were dated within the last 5 years, so I won't be at all embarassed to be proven dead wrong.

Re:The Standard Model

[darkstar949]

Belive it or not thats actualy the way that the model works. Like I said earlier, it is a very patch-work afair becuase of our lack of understanding of the way it all fits together. So in fact the name Standard Model is an oxymoron because it is nothing more than our best guess at how it works, and a guess that does hold exparimentaly true for now.

Re:The Standard Model

[WatertonMan]

"Violating" the standard model doesn't mean as much as it might at first glance. The standard model is largely a kludge to get things to fit together. It really is purely fitting data to experiment. It doesn't have an elegant underlying math from which everything makes sense. (Which isn't to say it doesn't make predictions)

The standard model has been looked down upon for a long time, even though it is the best we have. I'd say that superstrings or loop theories might give us the long sought for GUT. However they have a very long way to go still, even if they have made more progress than I think most thought back in the 80's.

Anyway, this is very exciting. Science often makes the most progress in the years following unexpected experimental results. Look at the speed of light being an ultimate constant...

Re:The Standard Model

[praedor]

Of course it should be noted that the Standard Model is a patch-work affair based on observation

And thus I propose we quit calling it a "model" as it is actually more like a quilt. We should henceforth call the "Standard Model" the "Patchwork Quilt" to be more descriptive of what it actually is.

Re:The Standard Model

[Sdoh]

Just one more sensation out of misunderstood
scientific paper.

I work with the team which confirmed it at Fermi in X(3872) -> J/Psi Pion Pion.

Some background on quarks first:

There are six quarks d, u, s, c, b, t. The heaviest are on the right.
And six antiquarks d(bar), u(bar), s(bar)... you've got the idea.

d, s, b have charge -1/3.
u, c, t have charge 2/3,
antiquarks and quarks have opposite charge.

All the matter consist of the particles which
are combinations of quarks. There are several
types of observed combinations: Mesons, Barions,
Tetraquarks, Pentaquarks. They are correspondingly
consist from 2, 3, 4 or 5 quarks.

All the Mesons consist of quark and antiquark. Examples:

Pion = (u, d(bar)); //charge +1
Kaon =(s, u(bar)); //charge -1
J/Psi =(c, c(bar)); //charge 0
D =(c, u(bar)); //charge 0
D(bar)=(c(bar), u); //charge 0

Barions consist of 3 quarks. Examples:

Proton =(u, u, d ); //charge +1
Neutron =(d, d, u ); //charge 0
Antiproton =(u(bar), u(bar), d(bar)); //charge -1

You may continue it yourself for Tetraquarks and Pentaquarks.
Make sure the total charge of the particle is integer.

Heavy quarks want to decay to a ligter ones.
Eventually to u, d, u(bar), d(bar) and also
leptons (electron, muon) neutrinos and photons.

Some people think that X(3872) is one of the exited states of (c, c(bar)). Some people think
that it could be a tetraquark (c, c(bar), u, u(bar)). We should observe other modes
to know for sure. I am looking for X(3872) -> DD (bar).
No luck so far.

It is definitely very exiting to see a new particle like it would be exiting
to see a new chemical element. As far as I know it fit quite nicely
in the standard model - the analog of the Mendeleev table for particle physics.

Re:The Standard Model

[midav]

For example, this particle may be constructed of four quarks, which are already known, but it is the first time that such a combination is proven to exist.

In the first sense, the Standard Model is not violated, but in the second, it has to be extended.

Re:The Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

From your sig:
This sentence is false

No, it's not. It's meaningless.

Re:The Standard Model

[Avian visitor]

All the matter consist of the particles which
are combinations of quarks.

Ordinary matter (like you and me) is composed of barions and leptons. Leptons are not composed of quarks. Same for neutrinos, which are a bit less ordinary, but still count as matter.

As barions provide most of the total mass of an atom, the best you can say is that most of the matter is made of quarks.

Re:The Standard Model

[Sdoh]

Agree. I just tried to provide a minimum of information required to understand the issue. for more info on Standard Model: http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/model.htm l

Re:The Standard Model

[Pooua]

I am looking at a KEK article, "Belle Discovers a New Particle." I notice that Figure 2 portrays the formation of the X(3872) particle through the decay products of electron-positron annihilation. This makes me wonder how the X(3872) particle is so massive? Electrons and positrons have hardly any mass, compared to a helium atom, but the X(3872) particle is said to have about as much mass as a helium atom. Not only do we get an X(3872), but we get a K-meson out of the deal! Where are we getting all this mass?

Note: Please keep this undergraduate. I enjoy Physics, but my sub-atomic education is limited to a few books I've read.

Re:The Standard Model

[Pooua]

Leptons are not composed of quarks.

Thank you for pointing that out. He had me confused when he made his statement that "all the matter" is made of quarks, because I was certain that there is a lot of matter that isn't made of quarks. In fact, I would not be surprised if there are a lot more particles in our Universe that are non-quark than quark, including some that we may never be able to detect because they don't interact with anything available to us.

Re:The Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

You have probably heard of the famous equation E=mc^2. Basically, it means that mass and energy are the same thing, which becomes even more apparent if you do the "usual" thing and set c to be equal to 1 (and fix all the other units to match). This energy is "corrected" by the so called relativistic gamma factor when approaching the speed of light and means that the energy of the particle increases with speed. Another useful equation is E^2 = mc^2 + (cp)^2, which tells you the total energy of a particle. It consists of the term mc^2, referred to as "rest energy/mass" or "invariant mass". This is the energy a particle has when at rest. Add to this the momentum of the particle squared, and you get the total energy of the particle. Of course, this is equivalent to E = mc^2 + T, where T = kinetic energy. (There are more equations with the same point, but you get the point already I hope.)
OK, got part 1 of the theory covered :)

You have read that the particles were found as a product of e-e+ annihilation. These annihilations don't occur with electrons and positrons at rest, they are hurled together with great velocities one against the other, which results in the particles having great kinetic energy. This ofcourse means, that when the particles get annihilated, not only do their rest masses get converted into pure energy, all of their kinetic energy goes into the available energy for formation of new particles, too. And that is where we get all these interesting new particles from.

That is why we keep building bigger and better colliders, to generate particles with greater kinetic energies, so when they annihilate, there is more energy available for the formation of new, more massive, particles (the hunt is on for the so called "Higgs particle" for example).

(Hope I didn't make too many/any mistakes, I'm just learning this stuff now at the University :)

Re:The Standard Model

[clarkcox3]

If you can disagree with the sentence, then it must have some meaning. :)

Re:The Standard Model

[Veramocor]

This website shoul help you understand.

QuarkDance!

Re:The Standard Model

[Pooua]

that is where we get all these interesting new particles from.

That sounds fine, except that I recall a discussion I once had with my Physics mentor when I was in high school (he was a professor at the local state University). I asked him how we could be so certain that we are discovering particles that actually exist in our Universe, instead of simply creating new particles, based on the energy we add in particle accelerators? How do we know that an atom, for example, contains certain sub-atomic particles, instead of our recombining sub-atomic parts into new particles that were never part of the atom? In particular, how do we know that what we are discovering are more fundamental building blocks of matter? The answer he gave me is that we are not creating particles that did not previously exist. When we break apart a proton (or whatever), we are seeing particles that actually compose the proton. At least, that's the way I understood and remember what he said.

Re:The Standard Model

[femto]

I find a good policy is to never make simplifications without telling the reader. Usually the simplifications lead to longer term confusion. When a simplification is made, at least let the reader know the nature of it.

I acknowledge that such writing requires a lot of thought and would probably have required more of your time than you were prepared to invest in a slashdot post.

I gather Feyman was very good at explaining complex things in a clear way, without making simplifications. For example, in his book QED, the only simplification he claimed to have made was to neglect polarisation effects. Even here he explained that he was making a simplification and gave enough basics that a knowledgeable reader could derive the missing information. (As a particle physicist, do you a agree with this last paragraph and are you aware of any other information left out of QED?)

Re:The Standard Model

[Sdoh]

I totally agree with your comment. Reader should be informed about simplifications.

I've got into the trap most scientists do.:) We overestimate the awareness of the outside community and could easily miss some important things in the explanation. Feynam had a great talent to avoid such a mishaps.

Feyman's QED is quite nice for unprepared reader. It differs from the real QED the same way high school "Intro to Mechanics" is different from graduate level "Theoretical Mechanics". They are both full and consistent but on the different levels of detalization and precision.

Just in case here is the link one more time.

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/model.h tm l

Thanks a lot for the comment.

Re:The Standard Model

[azav]

A good primer can be found at:

Http://www.particleadventure.org

Enjoy. This is the stuff they never taught us in HS and college and it's been known since the 1930's.

Re:The Standard Model

[Sdoh]

The questions is quite philosophical. :)

>How do we know that an atom, for example, contains
>certain sub-atomic particles, instead of our
>recombining sub-atomic parts into new particles
>that were never part of the atom?

We can not take a look on the proton with a microscope.
Instead we bombard it randomly with projectiles
and measure the angles of reflection. If atom
would be a percfect sphere the reflected
projectiles would be evenly distributed over
all possible angles. The truth is that they are not.

By looking at the pattern of the reflection one can tell
things about the internal structure of the proton.
What one can not tell is whether proton had this
structure BEFORE we hit it or it is DUE to
the hit. But do we really care? Science is all
about the things we can observe. We can not
observe proton BEFORE we bombard it with something.

This and many other questions are very
well addressed by Feyman in his QED.

Re:The Standard Model

[Zeinfeld]

My "WTF happened to QCD" was in regards to a comment implying that X(3872) was a four-quark static configuration, which I thought was unkosher.

Well the particle in question did not exactly stay arround long enough to appear in person on Larry King 'y know.

Anyone remember the 17.3Kev neutrino?

I would be somewhat cautious before announcing the end of the standard model - even though it currently does not really play nice with relativity.

Re:The Standard Model

[Zeinfeld]

I'd say the Standard Model would fall under "any known particle scheme"... so yes, if their results are real and reproducable, this particle would violate the Standard Model.

I think when most folk talk about violating the standard model they mean something like finding parity being broken, or a completely unexpected fundamental particle.

A new composit of lots of little particles does not really do it for me, particularly not from a single event. If you go to CERN and look at the canonical picture of the first discovery of the z0 (possibly J/psi) it turns out that although that was the big press photo they later decided it was probably bogus.

Re:The Standard Model

[Gurudev Das]

Tetraquarks? where? *screams*

Re:The Standard Model

[Zeinfeld]

Looking at the results there appears to be an unaccounted-for mass concentration present in the reaction. If it's not a new type of particle then what?

One event? Could be anything. It could be two particles that happened to travel very close together. We are talking about one observation out of millions per second.

For that matter it could easily be a random equipment malfunction that just looks like a particle, or that good old standby the accidental injection of test data or calibration data polluting the data.

Re:The Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, someone on slashdot makes me laugh. :)

"Of course it should be noted that the Standard Model is a patch-work affair based on observation with out much understanding of how everything fits together and as such will still don't know how everything works."

Doesn't that pretty much describe all human knowledge? Replace "the Standard Model" with "all human knowledge" and I like the quote a lot more.

Re:The Standard Model

[You're All Wrong]

Electrons and positrons have very little rest mass.
The electons in this colision were _not_ at rest.
Energy is mass, remember.

YAW.

Re:The Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

I am looking for X(3872) -> DD (bar).

Yow. What's the branching ratio expected to be with that?

Re:The Standard Model

[Ruie]

Small correction:

ordinary matter also consists of leptons (i.e. electrons) which are similar to quarks, but have integer charge.

Re:The Standard Model

[fireboy1919]

I thought my argument was fairly obvious.

They're extrapolating the existence of a particle from mass concentration readouts, which are in turn extrapolated from gravitational effects on the measuring instruments.

This is not direct at all.
A more direct approach would allow the particle to be observed more closely, and possibly manipulated. Of course, this is not really possible for such short-lived phenomena, but we must still consider that interpretation of mass readouts is prone to error.

It's not like looking at, holding, and biting into an apple in order to declare that what you have is an apple (this analogy points out several more direct methods of observation, of which, sadly, none are even remotely possible for mesons).

Re:The Standard Model

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that they finally found the Higgs boson.

It was behind the couch.

Re:The Standard Model

[azaris]

One event? Could be anything. It could be two particles that happened to travel very close together. We are talking about one observation out of millions per second.

One event? The chart reads at least 40 events in a very limited range. Kind of a consistent fluke. Also I do believe the experiment was replicated elsewhere.

Re:The Standard Model

[Tackhead]

> I would be somewhat cautious before announcing the end of the standard model - even though it currently does not really play nice with relativity.

Agreed. It's odd. I'd like to see more evidence, too.

> Anyone remember the 17.3Kev neutrino?

Nope. Got a URL? My favorite heavy particle was the Oh-My-God Particle, rest mass 3x10e20 eV, about that of a bacterium and the energy of a brick falling on your toe. Time delay between the flash of light from whatever spawned it and "it", about two weeks... from Milliway's, the Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe.

Re:The Standard Model

[NerdGirl82]

You've gotten tons of replies already... I just thought I should say it's nice to hear from someone who's involved with the work that gets reported on this site.

Keep up the good work... And if you find out any more, submit it as a story and scoop everyone.

Re:The Standard Model

[Sdoh]

It is quite nice to know that there are people
outside the lab who finds our results interesting. :)

It gives a lot of motivation (apart from the
curiocity :) ) to work in science instead of
just going to Wall Street for money.

Thanks a lot.

This is why I love physics

[Popadopolis]

It is always changing and bringing new and exciting information.

Re:This is why I love physics

[jo42]

> It is always changing and bringing new and exciting information.

How do we know these guys aren't just making this all up???

Re:This is why I love physics

[Popadopolis]

Heh, you couldn't make up half of that stuff, it is just too strange.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandpa??!

Re:This is why I love physics

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if they were making this stuff up, then they could use these made-up discoveries to justify increased funding for their research, and...never mind.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Malor]

Naw, strange is next week. This week it's beauty. :-)

Re:This is why I love physics

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I prefer to read biology. It doesn't produce quite as many major revolutions of thought that physics does, but there's always infinitely more controversy, and it's just so fun to watch Henry Morris fight his straw men so valiantly.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Noren]

If you're referring to that particular group of researchers, if you RTFA you can see that

Its discovery was recently confirmed by researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, US

That's the beauty of actual science, other people can duplicate your results.

If you were suggesting a vast, global conspiracy of physicists has organized itself to fraudulently claim the existance of a particle which is of interest mostly only to them- then I think you need to adjust your tinfoil hat.

Re:This is why I love physics

[orthogonal]

If you were suggesting a vast, global conspiracy of physicists has organized itself to fraudulently claim the existance of a particle which is of interest mostly only to them- then I think you need to adjust your tinfoil hat.

Yeah, that's simply ridiculous. That would be like positing a world-wide organization of people who proclaimed, and attempted to convince their followers to believe in, the existence of a ghost in the sky who created and controls the entire universe.

I guess you'd think that organization secured for its leaders influence over politics and broadcasting and political leaders. You might even think that this organization has its own country, and a leader who claims infallible knowledge of morality.

Clearly, if you believe such a conspiracy exists, you need to adjust your tin-foil hat.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. One person's "Insightful" is everyone else's "Redundant."

Way to go, moderator.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Noren]

Holy non-sequitur, Batman!

That'd be the right sort of thing to do with a real global conspiracy. Accumulation of vast amounts of money and power is the sort of goal which can hold such a conspiracy together. Also crucial is the avoidance of making falsifiable statements, and vigorous defense of initially safe claims which centuries later turn out to be falsifiable and/or blatantly wrong.

Making up a falsifiable claim in a field where everyone is in competition for meager grant money is not a good way to start a conspiracy. This is particularly true when substantial publicity and prestige (as measured on physicists' scale of such) would be given to anyone blowing the whistle and demonstrating the errors of the claim.

Clearly, if you believe that physicists have substantial control over politics or broadcasting, their own country, or claim infallible knowledge of morality- you need to adjust your tin-foil hat.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yee-eees?

Re:This is why I love physics

[imsabbel]

I wish be had the control :)
That would be the end of budget problems, and as villains we could create doomsday machines camoflaged as particle accelerators....

Re:This is why I love physics

[Westacular]

as villains we could create doomsday machines camoflaged as particle accelerators

You mean you don't? I'm disappointed.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Urkki]

• Also crucial is the avoidance of making falsifiable statements, and vigorous defense of initially safe claims which centuries later turn out to be falsifiable and/or blatantly wrong.

Actually, now that you brought it up, science does make some unfalsifiable statements, generally called the "scientific method". You have to believe in it, if you believe in science. I mean stuff like, experiments can be repeated, natural laws are same everywhere etc... That even if we've got it wrong now, there *is* an underlying pattern we can discover (because if there isn't, scientific research would be pointless).

Now I do believe that, and our current understanding of the world around us is pretty convincing argument that it's true. But I think it's wise to realize that it's still based on belief that universe works in rational manner.

Re:This is why I love physics

[Noren]

Shh! ixnay on iscussingday the oomsdayday achinesmay!

Oh, Man...

[Steve B]

I hate it when I come in for lunch and the lab has "Mystery Mesons".

Re:Oh, Man...

[daeley]

Lunch at the lab was cool until everybody lepton the bandwagon.

Re:Oh, Man...

[Hank Reardon]

GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAN!

But, I suppose it had to be said.

But, at least it was said where it could be appreciated...

Re:Oh, Man...

[smittyoneeach]

You know that the FreeMesons are a Satanic cult bent on world takeover? Fear!

The Obvious Question

[coolmacdude]

Because we need to make efforts to conserve energy, how many of these particles would just one monkey yield?

Re:The Obvious Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but I'd bet there's a bunch of Indian programmers who are willing to make them for almost half of what the monkey charges.

Re:The Obvious Question

[jo42]

42

Skin deep?

[Citizen of Earth]

...was revealed while studying beauty quarks...

I knew it wasn't just in the eye of the beholder.

Re:Skin deep?

[yourmom16]

I knew it wasn't just in the eye of the beholder.

Which eye? They have 11 of them you know.

Re:Skin deep?

[nate1138]

Beauty quarks?

Is that what that thing on Cindy Crawford's face is?

Re:Skin deep?

[KenSeymour]

Seen about a dozen years ago: Physicsists seek charming and beautiful daughters.

Re:Skin deep?

[qcomp]

more prosaic physicists call it the bottom quark.
But I am happy to see that Beauty and Truth are still in use ;-)

Re:Skin deep?

[dpilot]

Are you trying to tell us you've seen the quark on Cindy Crawford's bottom?

Re:Skin deep?

[Thud457]

Physicists must be ass men.

Re:Skin deep?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget that some prefer the top quarks.

Re:Skin deep?

[PGillingwater]

Ass men? No, I think you've missed the real meaning here. There are both "top" and "bottom" quarks, or in the current lingo, "dom" and "sub."

I can only imagine that experiemental physicists must really be into the whole bondage S&M scene, given their very tough science--looking for something that might not exist, and even if you find it, you'll never be able to see it anyway.

Mystery Meson X?

[burgburgburg]

She was always my favorite character in the "SubAtomic Defenders" series. But like a lot of her fans, I resent the description of her as "heavy". Perhaps zaftig would be a more accurate phrase. All I know is she filled out her uniform in a pleasing way.

Here's the press release

[Pingular]

from the Institute of Physics

This explains it

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in high school the lights were always dimming from the cafeteria's particle accelerator on meatloaf days.

US Research

[tintruder]

Astounding findings such as this and their long-term implications for theory and eventual application certainly prove the worth of physics research programs.

Too bad the US cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider some years back.

Why? It cost too much.

And how much are we spending in Iraq for benefits denied to our own citizens?

Priorities?

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

eventual application

Yeah, right. I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon. It's like the collider-boys sitting in their comfy chairs have a such an big and expensive machine that there's no way their research will ever be closed down. It would be too embarrasing to the ones who started funding them in the first place...

Spend the money on Earth sciences or, heck, build a dozen stations on the moon and start beaming energy down here. That would benefit the whole world and it can be done NOW.

Re:US Research

[Popadopolis]

I believe that the initiative has started up again, at least in Germany. They are building a straigt accelerator, which in and of itself is unheard of. I believe that that lab will be the most advanced in the world and is expected to bring multitudes of new discoveries and, one scientist claims, possibly an answer to effecient, clean fusion.

Re:US Research

[pmz]

I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon.

Actually, those applications are simply beyond your horizon.

Re:US Research

[Xzzy]

Even better, funding interest in FNAL is waning year by year, even though it is at the moment the largest accelerator on the planet (CERN will take that role whenever it's completed).

The inability for the common grunt to see any value in this research is putting some real strain in the system; people want results and stuff they can buy at wal-mart. Banging subatomic particles together, to date, isn't accomplishing that.

But this stuff is critically important for humanity to figure out, because the way I see it before we can become a spacefaring race, we need to know how the universe works, from the ground up.

Re:US Research

[Malor]

Overall, money invested in science has historically paid off at better than 10-1. You see a lot of projects that dead-end or don't produce all that much of value, but every once in awhile you get a major, bonanza strike. Problem is, you can't tell which projects will be the big hits until afterward, so it looks like a big waste of money.

It isn't. We're still benefiting (enormously!) from the basic research done in the 1950s; they had ideas back then we still haven't fully tapped. Every time someone looks back at one of those obscure reports and says "hey, wait a minute!".... it's a payoff. We have long, long since paid off the money we invested in the 1950s, and made a handsome profit to boot. Everything after that is gravy.

Research... the gift that keeps on giving. :-)

Re:US Research

[pmz]

And how much are we spending in Iraq for benefits denied to our own citizens?

It's seen as worthwhile by those who will hold the power after it is consolodated from the people and the states.

What does physics research do, anyway? Empower the public with advances in knowledge and technology providing solutions to difficult problems and building new markets to boost the world economy?!? Bah!

Re:US Research

[goodviking]

And further, why does every dollar spent have to have a concrete application as it's ultimate goal. What's wrong exactly with the expansion of collective human knowledge as a goal in and of itself. If we base all of our policy decisions on whether we can use it to shoot someone or make toast, then we'll wind up with a lot of dead bodies and a lot of fancy toasters. I'm personally happy that we provide money for topologists and don't ask them to work on an assembly line.

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

Name one.

How long have we had the Standard Model? How many applications has it produced? None? Well, I'm sure the tax-payers who paid for your billion dollar collider are happy to hear that you've got a nice bestiary of subatomic particles. Heck, these strange but oh so charming particles even come in different colours...

And yes. I am in a pissy mood today. My application was turned down while the collider boys got their annual load of tax-payer's money.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

A few decades ago, the Russians were spending lots of money invading countries and building an empire, while scientists migrated to US to do research. Where is Russia now? USA? Japan and China? Get the picture?

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

I'm not saying that we should scrap all basic research.

If you need to do basic research to attack an actual problem in the industry or another branch of science, it's perfectly fine. Researching something just for the sake of research, on the other hand, is nothing but gambling on the tax-payers money. I personally see it as immoral.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

Basic research is exactly why you need public funding. If you want to do research to attack an actual problem in an industry, get the industry to pay for it. Basic research is more about looking for whole new industries and applications, and no-one apart from the government has the capability to fund that kind of thing.

Re:US Research

[Ohreally_factor]

I'm not saying that we should scrap all basic research.

Apparently that is what you are saying.

If you need to do basic research to attack an actual problem in the industry or another branch of science, it's perfectly fine. Researching something just for the sake of research, on the other hand, is nothing but gambling on the tax-payers money. I personally see it as immoral.

Do I need to explain the difference between science and technology to you?

Re:US Research

[yourmom16]

Physics advances in the past century gave us lasers, LEDs, superconductors, semiconductors, and much more. We haven't yet utilized most of those discoveries.

Physics advances in the 1700s and 1800s taught us how to build more sturdy buildings(theory of elasticity), and gave us such things as antireflection coatings, motors, electromagnets, speakers/microphones, telephones, and radios.

What advances have we obtained from geology?

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

Indeed the money for basic research should come from the public funds. However, there is basic research and then there is "basic research".

The industry (with the expection of giants like DuPont, IBM or Intel) will not fund either kind of basic research no matter how well you make your case. They want applications that can be applied to their processes now or preferably yesterday. But you should go for that kind of money as well. Do some applied research. Make contacts in the industry. Get your hands dirty!

Now that you're doing the applied research, you'll soon realize that there is usually a huge shortage of well-defined fundamental information. After you see that, then you go and apply for public funding for a basic research project that supports your applied research project.

Now that, my friend, is what basic research is (or should be) about. Not a gamble where you roll the dice and hope to produce something useful, but a coherrent endeavour which will definitely help with problems in the applied research, and consequently industry, but which may also contribute to the humankind's fundamental understanding of the nature.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to do basic research to attack an actual problem in the industry or another branch of science, it's perfectly fine.

But then it wouldn't be basic research. Unless you're goal is to redefine basic research as applied research.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

How long have we had geology? How many applications has it produced? None?

Re:US Research

[Tackhead]

> Yeah, right. I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon. It's like the collider-boys sitting in their comfy chairs have a such an big and expensive machine that there's no way their research will ever be closed down. It would be too embarrasing to the ones who started funding them in the first place...
>
> Spend the money on Earth sciences or, heck, build a dozen stations on the moon and start beaming energy down here. That would benefit the whole world and it can be done NOW.

~ wavy lines as the Time machine takes us back to 1908, where the poster's great-grandfather is ranting at "Printdot" ~

Right on! Natural Philosophy constantly rakes in the Nobel Prizes without any real applications on the horizon. It's like that damned fool Rutherford sitting in his comfy chair watching his stupid contraption that throws helium ions into gold foil! Who cares if the atom is like a plum pudding or if it has a nucleus or not? There'll never be any practical application, why, Helium isn't even reactive!

Spend the money on Whaling science, or, heck, just chop down the trees, burn them all, use the heat to boil water, and spin a turbine connected to a bunch of big thick wires, and start sending the energy over here. That would benefit the whole world and it can be done NOW.

~ Thus endeth the flashback ~

Re:US Research

[Paul Dirac]

>They are building a straigt accelerator, which in and of itself is unheard of.

wrong- ever hear of the Stanford Linear Accelerator? SLAC

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

Do I need to explain the difference between science and technology to you?

(See my reply to another poster above)

As someone who runs his own lab, I know perfectly well that there is technology (engineering), applied research and basic research.

There's nothing wrong with mixing these three, but you've got to do it right. First you do applied research and use that research to guide your basic research. The applied research will guide your basic research to problems that are worth investigating both in the acadmic and applied sense.

That's the best of both worlds, unless you believe that getting ideas for basic research by looking at problems the applied research and the engineers are having is somehow unkosher? Tainting the sanctity of science, perhaps? How else should one select topics, then? By rolling a dice? "Because it sounds interesting"?

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

In the last 50 years of Geology?
- Constant increase in the detetion of Oil and Mineral reserves
- Better extraction of Minerals and Oil.
- Better weather perdiction
- Better Earthquake, volcano and other natural disaster prediction
- More accurate mapping
- Agrocultural improvements
- Building improvements (foundation design)
- Better urban design

I could go on... but you get the idea. Geology has saved millions of lives, billions of dollars and created millions of jobs. Hardly insignifigant.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

linear accelerator is nothing new. SLAC is one of the best known ones.

i don't know how you got the connection to fusion, but a new higher energy linear accelerator would be a welcome device to test the standard model further and also search for higgs boson.

unlike circular accelerators where protons are required to achieve higher energies, linear accelerators can use electrons/positrons which will lead to much cleaner collision events and higher luminosities.

Re:US Research

[micromoog]

So, basically, you're saying science should be kept within the confines of the imaginations of industry executives, where only the ideas that the executive thinks will make a buck should be pursued.

Ideas like this are the main reason the vast majority of people thing Libertarianism is a joke. There are a lot of places where the free market just doesn't work all that well.

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

No. I define basic research (as opposed to "basic research") as something that contributes both to the immediate applied research problems and accumulates fundamental knowledge of the nature in general.

Without the former, it's just "basic research" and funding it with public funds is questionable at least.

Re:US Research

[pmz]

Name one.

Even in my layman's knowledge of the physics realm, I hear about things like string theory and think that even if they are wrong they are still heading in the right direction. Who knows, maybe they'll figure out how to teleport something more than a particle?

I'm not an oracle, but I suppose it is easier to look back at 1800 and look forward to 1900 or look at 1900 and look forward to today. It's pretty much an exponential growth of knowledge, even right up to recent history.

My application was turned down while the collider boys got their annual load of tax-payer's money.

I may have not realized you used the words "Big Science" earlier. If you are mainly concerned about pork going nowhere, then you hit the nail on the head. However, it isn't just science, as government pork wastes taxpayer money in every sector and domain of everything everywhere. Another word for pork is "corruption," but the politicians like to stay in denile about such things.

If you are a physicist working on government-supported contracts or grants, you should probably consider moving into the private sector for a medium-sized company, if possible. Once a person gets disillusioned at the way government contracting works, it is pretty much irreversible (basically, it means you understand if the government were human, it would be a 1,300-pound man with moldy pizza stains on his mumu speaking about how he can run our lives oh so efficiently and fairly).

Re:US Research

[Popadopolis]

oops, thank you for pointing out my mistake.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

"And further, why does every dollar spent have to have a concrete application as it's ultimate goal"

The answer is that it doesn't have to, however, every dollar spent should in some concrete way serve the better of mankind. There is really no point on research that only serves it's own purpose. Research for the sake of research is largely useless.

Re:US Research

[RealProgrammer]

I'm not a physicist. I'm barely a programmer. I wouldn't know a free meson from a Free Mason.

But logically, freedom from terrorist attack has to precede building mega-science superstructures. What a nice target a miles-long power-sucking frozen pipe would make. The same holds for moon bases, undersea research pods, and whatever else we want. If it's there, some terrorist will want to blow it up.

The first duty of government is to defend the liberty of the people. Whether fighting terrorists is better done in Baghdad or in Chicago is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re:US Research

[chrisbord]

I personally rather spend that money on creating a better world, by spreading Peace and Democracy than some abstract research project that will do very little to improve the lives of actual people.

Re:US Research

[MillionthMonkey]

Now that, my friend, is what basic research is (or should be) about. Not a gamble where you roll the dice and hope to produce something useful, but a coherrent endeavour which will definitely help with problems in the applied research, and consequently industry, but which may also contribute to the humankind's fundamental understanding of the nature.

So... you're saying scientific research that contributes to humankind's fundamental understanding of nature is OK if it is guaranteed a predetermined desirable outcome resulting in cool new products for consumers and industry.

Man... what a bad, bad scientist you would be. I suggest you go for the MBA instead.

Re:US Research

[pmz]

I'm personally happy that we provide money for topologists and don't ask them to work on an assembly line.

Topology is pretty fundamental to computer-aided design and computer networking...

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

ahaha
"As someone who runs his own lab" Sure thing there skip, you're beowulf cluster of 2 486's in your mom's basement dosn't count :)

Re:US Research

[MindStalker]

None? I'm pretty sure all chemisty and electronics rely on the Standard Model, you might want to go back and check your definitions a bit.

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

you're saying science should be kept within the confines of the imaginations of industry executives

I don't quite know how you got to that.

When you do applied research, you're supposed to stay on track and research only what's relevant to the company so that they can make a quick buck (and pay for your next project).

However, within the basic research project that supports your applied research you're free to investigate whatever peripheral topic you want - just like in any basic research project. You're free to use your imagination.

Of course this boils down to what "free" means. I don't see that scientists should be free to get public funding for whatever fringe, not-of-this-world project their imagination can dream up - especially if it costs billions in hardware as it does in particle research. In that sense, yes, my definition may be different from yours.

Finally, the your libertarianism jab missed. I vote for the Greens.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

what makes you think that the Us has to do all this research??? i mean let the people who are good at things do those things. The Us we are good at war, so we do war, let all teh scientist go do their science thing elsewhere, perhaps someplace that will have the funding for them. But if you are a war monger then the US is the place to be, cuz nobody does war better than the US, oh and if you are not happy about the US being a war producing country then either change it or leave, but for teh love of GOD quit bitching, always with the bitching, bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch is all i ever hear, look deal with, either live with it, change it, or move, you attitude of i think i'll bitch aobut it in hopes that someone wil hear me and do something about it accomplishes nothing but piss people like me off, but instead of me just bitching aobut people like you, i am doing something about: telling you to shut up or put up

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's right. The USA pretty much blew up their entire country, so it's pretty damn unreasonable to ask that the USA spend money (that will mostly go straight back into the USA economy) to fix it instead of messing around with pure science.

I call troll. Nobody could seriously hold your viewpoint.

Re:US Research

[Alomex]

Overall, money invested in science has historically paid off at better than 10-1.

True in general, but generally false for big science. As Luis Alvarez (a famous experimentalist) pointed out large amounts of research money tend to lead to wasteful experimental science. Michelson-Morley done today would have been along the lines of

1. Send satellite to orbit
2. Satellite doesn't work, send repair crew
3. Send second satellite to orbit moving in reverse direction
4. Send super duper high power laser beam from satellite A to satellite B
5. Measure speed difference using built in atomic clocks
6. Conclude that speed of light is independent of "ether"

Total bill: a few billion dollars.

Total cost of Michelson-Morley as originally done: a few thousand dollars.

(insert "priceless" joke here)

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

So... you're saying scientific research that contributes to humankind's fundamental understanding of nature is OK if it is guaranteed a predetermined desirable outcome resulting in cool new products for consumers and industry.

Nicely put in a nutshell. It's the best of both worlds. Why? Because the latter condition is usually easy to fulfil. The really hard problems are in the basic research part.

Man... what a bad, bad scientist you would be. I suggest you go for the MBA instead.

Too late.

I've already got my PhD in Physics and I've been a postdoc all around Europe and now I've got my own lab. Not too bad for a bad scientist, eh?

Re:US Research

[yourmom16]

Better weather perdiction

All thats needed are the Navier-stokes equations, for the wind, and the heat equation for the temperature. Predicting the rain is rather simple given the temperature and pressure everywhere. The only problem is due to chaos, so inaccurate measurements will give very bad predictions. No geology is required, All thats needed is 19th century physics.

- Better Earthquake, volcano and other natural disaster prediction

This article states:

At present, we can determine which areas of the Earth have the most potential for damage, but we cannot determine within a short time when a major earthquake will occur. We know from historical records and observation how often many faults move, thus we can tell which are due to move next. However, we can only guess with an accuracy of +/- 50 to 150 years; not very useful for evacuating towns before a quake. Narrowing the window of earthquake occurence to a few hours or days would be extremely useful, but at the same time is the hardest part of earthquake prediction.

It doesn't sound terribly useful to me.

More accurate mapping

If you are talking about GPS, that was from the space program, not geologists. The techniques used before were millenia old.

Geology has saved millions of lives, billions of dollars and created millions of jobs.

The advances you list have not saved millions of lives, and probably not billions of dollars either. If any come close why didn't you list them?

Creating jobs does not mean its useful. If people were paid to sit around and do nothing, would that be useful? We could have full employment, while still having people starving, with nothing produced.

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

Luis Alvarez (a famous experimentalist) pointed out large amounts of research money tend to lead to wasteful experimental science.

Ah. Excellent.

You wouldn't have any references, would you?

Re:US Research

[Rasta Prefect]

Yeah, right. I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon.

It always amazes me how amazingly shortsighted people can be about these sorts of things. At the turn of the century Rutherford's experiments, or special/general relativity had no real applications on the horizon. Look how totally worthless _that_ turned out to be. We only ended up with semi-conductors and synchrotrons that we could use to determine the molecular structure of compounds, giving us say, most of modern technology. So I can see how any additional basic research into the fundamental structure of matter could be viewed as just throwing good money after bad. Totally worthless!

Re:US Research

[curious.corn]

Oh spreading reace & democracy at gunpoint, isn't that paradoxical? All you can do with violence is breed more of it and hold it at bay; true freedom comes with progress, self sustainment and some level of affluency. It's abstract research projects that bring enough discoveries and technology to create enough wealth for a society to relax social tensions; when the plate is empty men behave like wolves, the strogest gets to live and the weaker perishes. Science's mission, other than the pure advancement of human knowledge is to feed the masses and keep their ferinity in check; it's a wonderfully effective survival strategy, shame though that it's constantly broken by gluttons...

Re:US Research

[MillionthMonkey]

What does physics research do, anyway? Empower the public with advances in knowledge and technology providing solutions to difficult problems and building new markets to boost the world economy?!? Bah!

Physics research employs nerds and geeks in challenging, slightly less than decent-paying jobs, for one thing. Would you rather live in a world where physics was closed to you as a career option?

Of course, the libertarians will be all over that argument, saying it's a form of welfare for physicists, always playing on the basic human fear that someone, somewhere, might be getting away with something at my expense. But compared to recent corporate welfare projects like the Iraq war, physicsist welfare amounts to peanuts so the libertarians can just STFU.

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

And what was the total budget of Rutherford's lab or for the pens of the theoreticians figuring out the relativity?

Re:US Research

[arkanes]

"Because it sounds interesting" is the best possible reason there is to investigate something. If you only ever do research with a concrete aim in mind, you're never going to expand beyond that goal. Sounds to me like what you want to be doing is corporate R&D, not academic research.

Re:US Research

[Rasta Prefect]

Standard Model? How many applications has it produced?

Semi-conductors. Synchrotron Radiation and X-Ray Crystallography. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Re:US Research

[MillionthMonkey]

I've already got my PhD in Physics and I've been a postdoc all around Europe and now I've got my own lab.

Aaaaah, now I see what is going on here.

"MY research is important and is guaranteed to lead to important technological applications. The guys down the hall are wasting their time with research that has no obvious technological benefit down the road so I should be getting all that money and equipment."

Re:US Research

[Rasta Prefect]

And what was the total budget of Rutherford's lab or for the pens of the theoreticians figuring out the relativity?

Who cares? At the $10 Billion-ish price of say, the last supercollider canceled by congress, either would have been a bargin.

Re:US Research

[fenix down]

Ooookay. You can't do shit in electrical or chemical engineering without running into the Standard Model. Just because you don't know how an MRI works doesn't mean that they built it using 1700s science.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I see, you're an applied physicist... (arched eyebrow, patronising smile).

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

That's pretty much it.

No self-respecting scientist thinks otherwise.

Re:US Research

[Alomex]

You wouldn't have any references, would you?

I think it is in his autobiography "Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist".

Re:US Research

[budgenator]

Yes frequently the basic research has no practical use, but frequently the engineering and technology developed to conduct that basic reasearch is quite usefull on a practical basis.

Re:US Research

[SeattleGameboy]

I am guessing your eyesight precludes from seeing past your flat nose... If we followed your logic, we would have also said "what's the big deal about DNA? There so small and we have no idea what they do. Why spend ANY money on studying something so esoteric." Of course, if we followed your shortsighted moronic advice, the new wave of medicine based on DNA (which is already a billion dollar industry) which took over 50 years to develop, would have been shelved as "interesting, but no cigar." Some of the early works with Quantum Mechanics and Colliders are already paying divedends as it helps use make smaller and smaller computer chips. We are already on the cusp of starting the age of Quantum computing. I am not going to even bother why one of the human specie's most noble goals is to understand the universe itself. Thank goodness, scientist (and their supporters) routinely ignore your kind of rhetorics.

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

Quite frankly, I find it strange to think one should either be an applied physicist or a basic researcher. That's black-and-white thinking at its worst.

I'm proud to say that I am a physicist. Period. If I get ideas and money from the industry, that's great. If I can get public funding to support that research, thus benefitting both the science and the society now, it gets even better.

Just out of curiosity, what is so wrong about accepting corporate money? Mostly the cries of "unkosher research!" seem to be an excuse for the embittered purists who've never done an applied project and who are starved of funding they can't figure out any worthwhile research projects.

Re:US Research

[zCyl]

No self-respecting scientist thinks otherwise.

Self-respecting scientists respect the work of our colleagues as well.

No useful applied research is done which does not depend on pure research of the past which had no clear usage at the time of its creation.

Would you suggest we waited until we developed space travel before trying to find a theory of the solar system?

Re:US Research

[October_30th]

Ok. Maybe I wrote hastily.

"Because it sounds interesting" is OK if you can use it to back up something concrete, like an applied research project.

On another note, I find it disturbing that so many poeple in this thread have the either-or attitude about science. It's either applied or basic research. To me it's so obvious that the best projects should do both that I don't quite understand the reaction I've caused here.

Re:US Research

[cruachan]

My favourite Rutherford Quote

"We havn't the money, so we'll have to think"

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

no he's saying that as an industrial/corperate whore, he doesn't mind spending a little of his whore-monger's money doing applied reasearch as long as it's likely to be profitable; if it leads to to a basic research situation with questionable returns, he'll grovel at the public-funding trough. If it's pure basic research for the sake of universal understanding then he's against it.

Re:US Research

[micromoog]

Oops, wrong irrelevant fringe party. Anyhoo, I was basically saying that the people who decide what direction pure science takes should be, well, scientists. You're saying that the people who decide that should be industry executives. (i.e. you should only be given a public research grant if it directly applies to a project condoned by a corporation).

Applied research is "research with a specific application in mind" (what you're talking about). "Pure" or "basic" research is "research for the purpose of filling holes in human knowledge". Many people feel that the latter is worthwhile, and often eventually fuels the former (even in unexpected ways).

Or, do you just have a specific vendetta against particle accelerators?

Re:US Research

[budgenator]

Natural Philosophy constantly rakes in the Nobel Prizes without any real applications on the horizon.

Actualy Nobel Prizes have to be awarded for work of some practicality, that's why Einstein got his for the photo-electric effect rather than relativity.

Re:US Research

[jd]

I've been in nuclear research facilities, and trust me - the chairs aren't comfy. Nor was the fact that there was a few hundred tonnes of sulpher hexafluoride in an amazingly flimsy tower, within a hundred feet.

Re:US Research

[budgenator]

The general trend for accelerators is to straighten, early cyclotrons had a radius of a meter or so, now they are of kilometer radius.

before the cyclotron, accelerator were straight, and normaly used static electricity to provide the accelaeration just like a crt or crooke's tube

Re:US Research

[NanoGator]

"Priorities?"

Safety of the world.

Re:US Research

[arkanes]

It's probably because you're pointing at a large, interesting project that gives us lots of information about the fundamental structure of matter and energy (and who could even begin to speculate how important this kind of knowledge could be in years to come), and you (at least appear to be) knocking it because it doesn't produce anything that Pfeizer can sell.

Re:US Research

[ajs]

Researching something just for the sake of research, on the other hand, is nothing but gambling on the tax-payers money

First off, if you're doing it just for the sake of research, you're not gambling, you're spending.

If, on the other hand, you are doing a broad base of basic research in order to build the foundation on which your next generation of applied science will be built, you cannot say with confidence, "we will look into this phenomenon and it will yield these results." What you can say is, "we will investigate phenomena and theories which tie into our current applied science priorities and that will broaden our understanding of those areas." Even if you never get a "eureka" out of that research, it will provide the background for future work in the field.

That's not a hunch, gamble or guess. It's simple fact: basic research is one of the tools you need under your belt in order to do good applied science, and good applied science is required in order to build the next generation of technologies.

If you want to go Ludite, you can argue that we don't WANT OR NEED the next generation of technologies, but to argue that you should not do basic research because any single project cannot be said to produce a reward is just plain silly, you don't do research for technological rewards, creating a broader and deeper body of knowledge is the reward, and it WILL be taken advantage of by many researchers, scientists and technologists for centuries to come.

Re:US Research

[pmz]

Of course, the libertarians will be all over that argument, saying it's a form of welfare for physicists...

It isn't "welfare for physicists," if research is for helping government fufill its basic duties for the People. The billions upon billions of dollars we see today might not be needed, but there is a need for economists and political analysts in the government, for example. National defense is obvious. I'd even say well-thought-out vaccination programs are justified, if such a relatively simple measure could do things such as eradicate diseases like polio and smallpox (good vaccines do good for the entire nation/world as opposed to things like monetary welfare combined with a drug war that traps bleeding families and communities into a figurative shark tank).

Welfare for the sake of it is not the responsibility of the government (no matter what the Dems say), but this shouldn't be taken to preclude legitimate, useful, and constitutional government contracts for research.

...recent corporate welfare projects like the Iraq war physicsist welfare amounts to peanuts so the libertarians can just STFU.

Are you trying to say libertarians would favor corporate welfare, even though it is just as inequitable and unhealthy in the marketplace as other forms of welfare? If so, I think you might have the wrong impression and probably mean to aim your criticism at the Republicans.

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

> Problem is, you can't tell which projects
> will be the big hits until afterward

I beg to differ. CP violation is not going
to produce an economic benefit in my lifetime.
That doesn't take second-sight.

Re:US Research

[Minna Kirai]

I define basic research (as opposed to "basic research") as something that contributes both to the immediate applied research problems and accumulates fundamental knowledge of the nature in general.

So to summarize, you just made a dozen contrarian posts because you wish "basic research" meant something different than what it means.

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

You're taking rhetorical cheap shots and
failing to substantively address the issue.
Whether Pfizer can sell something or not is
not interesting. What is interesting is
whether it kills people or saves their lives.
Oxfam estimates that a strategic investment
of $20 in famine relief is the cost of a
human life. For the cost of the SSC project,
the U.S. could have eliminated malnutrition
globally. For this reason, I contend that
ever HEP physicist should be taken out and
shot, before they kill again.

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

In my view, the substantive point is that
public funds should be expended for public
benefit. Anything else is just corruption.

Big science does not provide public benefit
which corresponds to its public funding.

Now if you want to start a voluntary organization
for the purpose of funding your supercollider,
I can only encourage you. But putting a
gun in my back to prevent me from using
my money to save human lives via medical
research or famine relief is a morally
reprehensible act.

Re:US Research

[sean.peters]

But this stuff is critically important for humanity to figure out, because the way I see it before we can become a spacefaring race, we need to know how the universe works, from the ground up.

I love unfounded assumptions. Of course, it's a given that we MUST become a spacefaring race, right? Why is that again?

I'm not saying that going into space isn't a noble goal. I am saying that you need to provide some kind of explanation as to WHY we need to do it - since most taxpayers are not going to make this connection by themselves.

Sean

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

If you want to fund topologists, I won't
complain. If you put a gun in my back
and take the money I was going to use to
feed a starving family in Mozambique, and
spend it on your shiny play toy, I think
there are a number of people who have a right
to kill you in self-defense.

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

And the theory of relativity didn't cost
one public dollar. Einstein produced it
because he wanted to.

Re:US Research

[MillionthMonkey]

It isn't "welfare for physicists," if research is for helping government fufill its basic duties for the People.

I agree with your points. I was only mentioning one benefit, which is why I said "for one thing".

Perhaps I do mean to aim my criticism at Republicans, but it's been fashionable of late for Republicans to pass themselves off as libertarians. (Ducks...)

Re:US Research

[arkanes]

The price of disposing of the bodies of all the scientists you kill would be enough to feed an entire region of people in Ethepia. We'd need to kill all the funeral directors, too.

Re:US Research

[BigAl_nz]

My favourite Rutherford Quote

"We havn't the money, so we'll have to think"

Heh, maybe that's why he's on the NZ$100 note :)

Re:US Research

[Minna Kirai]

If you are talking about GPS, that was from the space program, not geologists. The techniques used before were millenia old.

Incorrect. Mapping accuracy made several huge leaps in the 1400-1700 timeframe. It was only 2 centuries ago that precision mechanical clocks allowed decent calcuation of longitude.

Re:US Research

[micromoog]

It is for the public benefit. It just takes a longer view of things.

Using the word "corruption" is this context is particularly silly, considering the kinds of nepotism and old-boys-club pandering that goes on every day for no public benefit (and even for public harm).

Re:US Research

[Dirtside]

Overall, money invested in science has historically paid off at better than 10-1.

True in general, but generally false for big science.

So the statement about science is true in general, but also false in general?

Re:US Research

[kerrbear]

What's wrong exactly with the expansion of collective human knowledge as a goal in and of itself. If we base all of our policy decisions on whether we can use it to shoot someone or make toast, then we'll wind up with a lot of dead bodies and a lot of fancy toasters.

Hear, hear! Let's accumulate more knowledge. We already have more than enough dead bodies and fancy toasters as it is :-P

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

> No self-respecting scientist thinks otherwise.

Actually, some of us self-respecting scientists don't have massive egos and ideological blinders. :)

If you decide to fund only applied research, and no basic research at all (which is what you suggest), you constrain the way in which knowledge can expand to only what you can envision, not to what all scientists can envision.

Would you have funded number theory? Probably not - scratch cryptography.

Would you have funded finding DNA? Probably not - scratch genetics.

Would you have funded [basic research]? Probably not - scratch [fundamental technology].

I'm working on a very applied problem, and someone's just suggested I go check out Lie Brackets - 100% abstract, non-applied group theory, not researched for any application...until suddenly it became important for concrete applications in physics, math, computer science, and in my research.

I humbly submit that you have a very constrained view of how science should advance. And I humbly submit that we're all better off that you are unable to enforce that view.

Re:US Research

[boomka]

whoever says scientists are just raking in the money and doing nothing needs a clue.

First off, science budget is only a small fraction of money spent by the government. Secondly, scientists are making just enough money to keep them working. Anyone who has been in the graduate school can tell you about a classic dilemma - stay in academia and earn 30k a year or get an industry job and start with a small wage of 60-70k.
The system encourages only the people with real dedication and passion to stay and do science, even knowing that they could be paid twice more for their talent doing a more mundane job.

And think about something else... That SSC which was never built - they closed it because it required like a couple billions more and politicians said "this is too much". That was a project which would have paid off with many many years of good frontier science.

Now compare these couple billions to 87 billions we just allocated for Iraq in one day.

Re:US Research

[|_uke]

I dont know if we 'need' to become a spacefaring race... IANAS (I am not a scientist) but... I can probably think of a few advantages.

For the short term, places like the asteroid belt can be mined for metals and what have you. (Of course, I can only see that happening if someone can come up with a cost effective way to do this... but if it was profitable, I could definatly see companies being interested in this)

Maybe the next material used in computer chips is some before now unknown (or low avalibility) material we find in the belt?

For the long term, the further existance of the human race. Yah yah, they are saying that the chance of a planet killer is now like 30 percent less than they thought... but it would suck pretty hard for the entire human race to be wiped out by a rock. Of course, falling rocks are not even our biggest consern. The human race is very capable at wiping it self out without any external help.

Im sure there are others =)

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

> And the theory of relativity didn't cost
one public dollar.

Mostly incorrect - general relativity was published in 1915, after Einstein had held academic positions for years. (Special relativity was published in 1905, though, while Einstein was supporting his PhD work by working in a patent office.)

http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1921/einst ei n-bio.html

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

> The answer is that it doesn't have to, however, every dollar spent should in some concrete way serve the better of mankind.

That would be research, then. "Advancing human knowledge, leading to stunning breakthroughs that bring us closer to understanding the truth of the universe while allowing astonishing technologies that not only repay themselves many-fold but also directly and massively raise the standard of human living themselves" sounds like it would meet your criterion.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you put a gun in my back and take the money I was going to use to
> feed a starving family in Mozambique, and spend it on your shiny play toy, I think
> there are a number of people who have a right to kill you in self-defense.

I assume you oppose all government funding for highways and transportation, yes? After all, that money could be used to feed starving families.

Or fighting forest fires - starving families!

Or funding education - starving families!

Or maybe - just maybe - the advancement of human knowledge is a valid way to spend money. In fact, considering that money invested in research is paid back manyfold, leading to an increase in the amount of money available to feed starving families, short-sighted views like yours would result in more starving families! You family-starver!!!

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

> And yes. I am in a pissy mood today. My application was turned down while the
> collider boys got their annual load of tax-payer's money.

Then maybe - just maybe - your narrow view of What Is Right leads you to do crappy science.

Judging by your questionable knowledge (see "Standard Model" responses) and apparent lack of scientific curiosity, I wouldn't be all that surprised.

You don't have to take my advice, but it's worth considering that you might do a little better if you took that huge chip off your shoulder. Takes a lot of effort to carry around. :)

Re:US Research

[Xzzy]

> Of course, it's a given that we MUST become a spacefaring race, right?

No not at all.

I just see it as an inevitable development. Humans are just too darned curious. If a means of efficient travel is developed, a portion of us would without second thoughts utilize them.

Re:US Research

[GeoGreg]

This is a false dilemma. There are many things in the budget of the US government other than famine relief and high energy physics. The Department of Defense comes to mind as a place we could have reduced investment over the years (how many times over did we need to blow up the world, anyway?). Should we be funding malnutrition relief over research into heart disease? Cancer? Should we not have funded that dead-end research into the workings of obscure "retroviruses" in the 70s that seemed at the time not to have any application to human disease? (Hint: HIV is a retrovirus)

The choice is not between high energy physics and hunger relief. The developed world (this includes Europe) could do much more to help the poor in their own and other countries. It could (and should) be done, IMHO, without defunding basic research. We can do both. Now the job is to work to convince the politicians of that. That's a lot harder than going on Slashdot and recommending the murder of physicists.

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

Oh yes, Hitler is not as bad as Stalin.
Would you therefore vote for him?

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

Harder is not the word. Quixotic is.
Advocating the execution of HEP physicists
is an *achieveable* end, at least.

But what is corruption if not the diversion
of public funds to private benefit?

I certainly agree with you about the defense
budget, however.

Re:US Research

[rw2]

That's what the folks alive during the nuclear research said, but they are probably happy to have MRI's to diagnose their various issues now.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

all of which invented before the standard model was formulated, and use unrelated physics.

not to say there won't be something one day, but there hasn't been yet.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

er crap.

name one electrical engineer who says 'Sod Kirchoff's laws, boys, that's for sissies, we're going to do our work starting with a Wick expansion'.

MRI has sod-all to do with the standard model either.

you don't know what the standard model is, do you?

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

only in the same sense that taking a shit relies on the standard model.

And I was doing that before the standard model was invented, although Glashow and Salam did show me some refinements to my technique, and Weinberg's ass-wiping ideas were revolutionary.

name an advance in chemistry and electronics that uses the standard model. no don't, I'll save you some time. there aren't any.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

he has a point.

this kind of high energy physics is very expensive. and by definition it has no applications, because the energies involved are so huge that the physics studied is physics of processes that only occur in the most energetic of deep space and early universe domains. you have never encountered a B-meson, and unless you join KEK or SLAC, you never will.

Re:US Research

[chrisbord]

All you can do with violence is breed more of it and hold it at bay

Hahaha! So installing a democracy in the place of a dictatorship cannot work if the catalyst is violence?? In that case, every single democracy in the world today is an illusion, and we're not really having this discussion! This must be the Matrix!

Man you anti-any-war wackos are great entertainment.

Re:US Research

[whereiswaldo]

Spend the money on Earth sciences or, heck, build a dozen stations on the moon and start beaming energy down here. That would benefit the whole world and it can be done NOW.

Surely money could be made as well. Why hasn't some billionaire taken a bold step up to the plate? Too fun playing with monopoly money and people's lives?

Re:US Research

[Sdoh]

Nice example:

LISA

Total cost $500M. 1/5 of just one submarine or five days of war in Iraq.

The other example is the Hubble space telescope ~$2B.
I think it payed off well with:

A GOOD part of $2B is invested in related fields. Optics, materials, communications etc.

Hundreds of grads and undergrads who work on this project will apply their skills
in some other fields.

Millions of kids got their first interest in science from Hubble space images.

Millions of adults consider discovery channel as a good rest after work. (Hopefully :))

I will not discuss the difference of LISA from Michelson-Morley. You are not surprized that Power plant is more expensive than windmill don't you. ? :)

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

yup.

and I work in HEP.

I'm not sure about the 'return on tax money' argument though. the scientific return is small, and that's all we need consider our pasty physicist asses about. there's so much basic research that doesn't get funded while millions are spent on this stuff.

good, decent physics is ignored because politicians like macho crap about 'high energy beams'. they think they can focus a beam of mystery mesons on Saddam. I'm not joking, they do!

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

Semi-Conductors
invented Bell labs 1947.

Synchrotron Radiation
hard to say when it was discovered, but was fully understood in 1956 when Tomboulian and Hartman ran the 320-MeV electron synchrotron at Cornell. used long before that of course. Dates back to the 1920s at least.

X-Ray Crystallography
again, hard to say when it was invented. Lets just say it was fully operational and useful when Watson and Crick used it to determine DNA structure in 1953. again, it had a history far predating that use. the maths was hard (still is!)

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging
the first NMR image was made in 1946.

so, these used the standard model did they?

weird that, since the electroweak theory was developed in 1967, and it wasn't until 1973 that the standard model was formulated.

but hey, never let the facts get in the way of a mod point.

Re:US Research

[yourmom16]

My point still stands because:
1. They weren't done by geologists.
2. They weren't done in the past 50 years

Re:US Research

[juhaz]

But logically, freedom from terrorist attack has to precede building mega-science superstructures.

Then those superstructures can never be built. NEVER. Which means the terrorists have won.
Good luck waiting while the rest of the world goes by, unhindered by illogical fear...

Because there won't be such thing as "freedom from terrorist attacks" no matter what fools like to think. Violence is part of human nature, and will always be with us, no matter how much we might hate that, there's no point denying it.

Re:US Research

[Minna Kirai]

What advances have we obtained from geology?

Judging from how many hundreds of billions of dollars the US spends maintaining a grip on the fruits of those advances, they are highly valued.

Re:US Research

[ErikZ]

There is already more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The reason people are starving is mostly because their leaders are using them as pawns. (Africa) Or just down give a damn about them. (N. Korea)

Re:US Research

[Mycroft_VIII]

I love unfounded assumptions. Of course, it's a given that we MUST become a spacefaring race, right? Why is that again?

I suppose we don't absolutely have to. But I honestly think it's our best bet to avoid extinction. Even if every chunk of rock of decent size in the solor system manages to keep missing us (even though the planet has the scars to testify otherwise) and we don't accidently or through carelessness destroy the bio-sphere, or just bio-weapon ourselves out of existance. There is of course the simple fact the sun will eventually run out of hydrogen and do the whole swell and swollow the earth thing.
Niven said it well "The earth is to small a basket to keep all our eggs in".

Mycroft

Re:US Research

[micromoog]

"Corruption" would be manipulating the public trust for personal gain, unlike big science which does have a long-term philanthropic purpose (albeit one you may not agree with).

So, I was pointing out that using the term "corruption" here is a laughable hyperbole, along the lines of bringing up Hitler in a completely unrelated discussion . . . oops, you did that too.

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

Or are spending their money on HEP instead of delivering food to the people whose leaders are using them as pawns or just down giving a damn about them.

Re:US Research

[Anonymous Coward]

no, they didn't say that.

these big machines are creating physics that doesn't exist anywhere in the universe except at the point of collision, and then studying it. it's useless.

nuclear physics, on the other hand, goes on in rocks, in metals, in the sun etcetc. we're made of nuclei and so is most everything around us. Worthy of study (and it was very very cheap compared to modern big physics) But we're not made of B-mesons, like in Soviet Russia, we make them.

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

Oh come on. Most nuclear science was developed for the direct practical purpose of killing vast numbers of people. MRI was developed by some guy with a cute idea. I'd bet you could not have repopulated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the people whose lives were saved by MRI since its invention.

Re:US Research

[rw2]

You are thinking of nuclear weapons. I'm refering to partical physics.

Re:US Research

[MindStalker]

I think what your trying to say is name an advancement of chemistry that rely on a recent revision to the standard model. I may be wrong but I believe the standard model covers even the simplist molecular scale occurances. Remember the periodic table, balancing equasions and whatnot. All standard model I believe.

Re:US Research

[ErikZ]

Uh, that doesn't work. Don't you pay attention?

The leaders that are using the people as pawns just sell the food on the black market. In fact, they starve their own people intentionally to get international aid.

The leaders that don't care about their people:
N. Korea just diverts the majority of the food it recieves to it's military. Which is used as an incentive to stay in the military (You won't starve) and to follow orders. Mainly to keep the population subdued.

By sending food to N. Korea you are helping maintain misery and death that's going on there.

By sending food to Africa the leaders are learning "If you starve your people, the world sends you money and stuff."

Re:US Research

[aminorex]

So you are willing to kill millions of people to teach some schmuck with golden faucets a lesson?

Re:US Research

[Zeriel]

You're either trolling, stupid, or not paying attention.

Shipping food to most of the countries with lots of starving people has two results:
1) Dictator gets more money/loyalty.
2) Most people in that country continue to starve.

Unless you're advocating taking over distribution to make sure the food gets where its needed. In which case you're really talking about invasion, and ultimately, imperialism.
It's been tried the polite way, and no dictator worth anything has ever let peacable aid convoys feed more than a small, select percentage of his people without his own people being in control of the food supplies (And thus profiting and black-marketing, people starve, etc.)

So let 'em starve, pretend you're helping and enrich the dictator, or use military force to feed the people who need feeding. Those are your choices. When you can rationalize one of them, then come back and talk about cutting research funding.

Re:US Research

[WhiteDragon]

I just read Einstein's Bridge by John Cramer. This is a great book about an alternative reason why the SSC was cancelled (SSC was built, and the energy was high enough to attract a hostile alien race, but friendly aliens sent some scientists back in time to prevent it)

Paging Mr. Arthur Dent...

[smack_attack]

...Mr. Arthur Dent, please report to the particle physics lab and make confused faces.

That is all.

Re:Paging Mr. Arthur Dent...

[Jon Abbott]

...Mr. Arthur Dent, please report to the particle physics lab and make confused faces.

...and don't forget to bring along your favorite cup of strong Brownian Motion producer, as well.

Re:Paging Mr. Arthur Dent...

[Arthur Dent]

Can't make it. You see, I'm lying down in front of my house to prevent a yellow...
But you know the rest.

This sounds like...

[immanis]

... a subatomic particle that our friend Jar Jar would have named.

That, or the new compact SUV from Nissan.

The Nissan Meson. Drive.

String Theory

[attobyte]

So what does this mean for the String Theory?

Re:String Theory

[Popadopolis]

I think that it means an attition to string theory, or at least a modification. This is why Quantum Physics textbooks give URLs for specific details, it is always changing.

Re:String Theory

[jpflip]

Probably not very much, but who knows? String theory generally deals with phenomena at energy scales MUCH higher than these accelerators are dealing with, so high in fact that it really doesn't make any useful predictions about ordinary phenomena (even particle accelerator phenomena!) It's sort of like trying to predict the shape of a snowflake if all you've ever seen is steam. That's one of the main complaints about the theory - it may be right, it may be wrong, but it doesn't have any major prospects for predictions we could even test!

Re:String Theory

[ameoba]

I thought that was the whole reason that people studied it... I mean, you make an entire career on 'doing' string theory and never have to really worry about being shown wrong.

Re:String Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why Quantum Physics textbooks give URLs for specific details, it is always changing.

The theory only changes if you read the damn books.

Re:String Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha! That was actually funny! Mod parent up!

Re:String theory

[Dr Caleb]

I guess this is kind of a knotty problem?

No, I'm a frayed knot.

Re:String Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell did this worthless comment get voted up?

Re:String Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

So what does this mean for the String Theory?

That our understanding of the universe is youthful in scope, and that each new discovery is like a kitten playing with that string.

Re:String theory

[Deflagro]

I gotta ask... How long have you been waiting to use that joke? :)

Re:String theory

[Daetrin]

Okay, where'd you learn The Rope Joke? :)

Re:String theory

[Dr Caleb]

Yeeeaaarrs....lol

Re:String theory

[Dr Caleb]

If you wait until the end of Sim City 2000 credits, they'll tell you the "3 strings walk into a bar" joke. It takes about 5 minutes to get there.

Still my favorite joke.

In Other News...

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC reports that judges in Japan have discovered a new type of supermodel that defies current theories of anorexia. The "Miss Mystery" was discovered while studying beauty queens at the KEK "Miss Physics World" Beauty Pageant in Tsukuba, Japan. "It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists in its nearly weightless state for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before decaying into a fatter, altogether more common-place model," said Takabushi Takabusho, before adjusting his glasses and peering into the model viewing scope again.

I always loved particle physics

[nizo]

gotta love how they study something by smashing it into peices. I always pictured using the same technique to study how a radio works by shooting bullets into it, and then observing the peices as they fly out of the radio :-)

Re:I always loved particle physics

[Stephen Maturin]

Hmm... where have I heard this one before?
"He who breaks a thing to findo out how it works has already left the path of wisdom"

Re:I always loved particle physics

[spektr]

gotta love how they study something by smashing it into peices. I always pictured using the same technique to study how a radio works by shooting bullets into it, and then observing the peices as they fly out of the radio :-)

After Heisenberg tried this he discovered his famous uncertainty princinple: the more precise you measure the inner workings of the radio, the more likely it is that it changes its mode of operation in a major way.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[darkmeridian]

We call this an X-ray.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[Anonymous Coward]

Except to be a scientist, you have to know how to spell.

"Pieces."

Boy, that was a hard one.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[Idarubicin]

I've heard modern accelerator physics described as the Swiss Watch method.

To find out how a Swiss watch works:

Take two watches.

Accelerate them to (nearly) the speed of light.

Bang them together.

Try to figure out where each piece came from by watching where it landed.

Except a particle physics watch is slightly more difficult, because the watch contains gears that disappear in millionth of a millionth of a milllionth of a second, and springs that are a millionth of a millionth of an inch in size.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[sbillard]

The wavelength of light is to big to "see" what protons and neutrons are made of.
They must accelerate particles to speeds that approach "c" because as a particle's momentum increases, it's wavelength shortens. This gives us the ability to "see" what is happening in these fancy bubble chambers.

Or something.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always just watch Letterman...or Gallagher.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[boomka]

we don't study things that have been smashed into pieces.
Actually, in an accelerator, when electrons or protons collide,
we _create_ many different particles and study them.

We don't study the electrons or the protons any more - they are not as interesting as the particles that can be produced by annihilating them.

And to be even more precise, the particles we study are not
even pieces of the original particles, they simply emerge out
of the free energy released in the collision, and most often have nothing whatsoever to do with the original particles.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[TopShelf]

err... not exactly.

One means of detecting these particles is through the use of scintillating tile, which gives off tiny (and I mean tiny) flashes of light when certain particles pass through them. About 15 years ago I had a work study job in a physics lab at Michigan testing photomultiplier tubes, which would take the flashes of light generated when cosmic ray particles passed through the tile, and convert that to an electronic signal that could be monitored.

While I'm sure there are also other means they're using to pick these signals up, I don't think that wavelength idea holds much water. That would have more to do with the spectrum of light that they are trying to observe a given object with (i.e. x-rays, uv, etc.) than anything else.

Re:I always loved particle physics

[kavau]

Reminds me of the "far side" cartoon where you see the sad remainders of chickens, frogs, and other small animals splattered against an observation window in a research facility. Overhead is a sign saying "particle accelerator", and one member of the cleaning crew says to another: "Ever since they allowed biologists in here, our job has become twice as hard!"

Re:I always loved particle physics

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, we smash the radio and the pieces that fly apart reassemble into a toaster... then we study the toaster to understand the radio! Got it!

Re:I always loved particle physics

[Anonymous Coward]

"peices" is a perfectly cromulent word.

knot of string?

[ilikecaffeine]

Could this be explained by string theory?
Maybe the individual particles/strings were close enough together to cause constructive intereference? They appeared as one larger particle because it essentially was. However, the system was unstable, and "decayed" into the other particles almost instantly. Really, they were different particles all along.

That's my completely amateur wild guess. Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about care to comment?

Re:knot of string?

[momerath2003]

No, but we can tell you to shut up, as even you admit that you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about.

Re:knot of string?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe string theory does predict the existance of superheavy particles called sparticles. I'm not sure what other properties that sparticles have, other than being superheavy.

It's too bad that I'm an amature and can't comprehend all the math, or I'd be willing to give you a better explination...

Re:knot of string?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a dick.

Re:knot of string?

[RHS Bomber]

Could this is the first observation of a supersymmetry, something that string theory requires but has never been observed before. The article didn't mention if the mystery meson was tied to a photon or gluon. Of course, then there's that multidimensional thing...

Re:knot of string?

[Anonymous Coward]

>ii>That's my completely amateur wild guess. Anyone who actually knows what they're talking about care to comment?

Here's my completely amateur spouting:

If you consider only calculations above on-shell ground states you can open up some more interesting conjecture. This precludes the use of Green function simplifications... well, maybe. You could consider arbitrary excited external on-shell string states to be a simplification of more complex calculations (well, that's beyond me, anyway). But explicit expression for cubic couplings between arbitrary on-shell states (i.e., oscillators) that act in discrete Fock (har, he said Fock) spaces on n-string systems could cause "interference" (bad word, but you get the drift). Maybe the answer lies in ""Compactification of Higher Dimensions", specifically, the anomaly cancellation in four dimensions in SSTv2 (Green, Schwartz, Witten). Then you'd need a better understanding of Yang-Mills than I have (i.e., I can drop the name in Slashdot spoutings like this one but can't even read the symbols used to describe it).

I can help write resumes too.

Re:knot of string?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what other properties that sparticles have, other than being superheavy.

Super symmetry perhaps?

Re:knot of string?

[NorthDude]

Be a slut!

laught, it's a joke...

Revolution... or not?

[_Eric]

Quoting the last paragraph of the article:

To explain it, theoretical physicists may have to modify their theory of the colour force; or make X(3872) the first example of a new type of meson, one that is made from four quarks (two quarks and two antiquarks).

So this could be a bound state of 4 quarks. That's new, true, but the zoology of this kind of particules (bound quarks) is already huge.

Double check...

[PinchDuck]

If this is "Overthrow the Standard Model"-class Big News, I would like to see it duplicated first. Otherwise it's just an invisible purple dragon floating in my garage...

Re:Double check...

[Jerf]

The Belle discovery was recently confirmed by researchers with the CDF experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, home of the Tevatron, the world's largest atom smasher. There the X(3872) is referred to as the "mystery meson."

I had that concern too, so I was looking for this. Sorry, but you earned this:

RTFAs.

No hard feelings, I hope.

Re:Double check...

[azzy]

How do we know that you didn't have a purple dragon in your garage for about one billionth of a trillionth of a second?

Re:Double check...

[c4ffeine]

I have 17i of those in MY garage... How about you? They're getting really annoying, though, they're burning pretty much everything I store there

Re:Double check...

[pacman on prozac]

Until the door is opened we don't :-)

Re:Double check...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant a Slashdot duplicate.

Re:Double check...

[CoyoteGuy]

How do we know that you didn't have a purple dragon in your garage for about one billionth of a trillionth of a second?

Oh no.. I fell for this at a party once.. There was a heavy "beauty quark" when I opened the door last. Why don't you open the door and show us?

Re:Double check...

[RobertB-DC]

How do we know that you didn't have a purple dragon in your garage for about one billionth of a trillionth of a second?

I think we know for certain that a purple dragon *was* in the garage, we just don't know *when* it was there.

Or do we know that a purple dragon was in *a* garage at 10:40am, but we don't know *which* garage?

Purple dragon physics always confused me in high school.

Re:Double check...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we assume it's a baby dragon 1 meter long, it will take 1 meter / c = 3.3 nanoseconds for one end of the dragon to realize that the other end has started disappearing. The dragon can't disappear in much less time than that. If the dragon was small enough to disappear in a billionth of a trillionth of a second (10^-21 sec) then it's length would be no more than 10^-21 sec * c = 3*10^-13 meters. That's much smaller than the wavelength of purple light. So, either the dragon lasts longer than a billionth of a trillionth of a second, or it isn't really purple at all!

Re:Double check...

[Anonymous Coward]

Congradulations. You are a bigger nerd then I.

Re:Double check...

[stwrtpj]

How do we know that you didn't have a purple dragon in your garage for about one billionth of a trillionth of a second?

He did, as it only took this long for the purple dragon to collide with an anti-purple dragon and both disappear, as purple and anti-purple dragon pairs are constantly being created and destroyed. It's called Dragon-Point Energy.

Recent studies have shown, however, that having a large concentration of ethyl alcohol molecules nearby, preferably circulating in the bloodstream of the observer, can cause purple dragons to persist for far longer. This theory has yet to be proven, since it appears to be localized to the observer, much in the way that the act of observing a quantum event can affect it.

Re:Double check...

[hesiod]

> Until the door is opened we don't

But as soon as the door is opened, we can see that it is there, ergo, it isn't any more. So we MUST assume that it is there. To verify this, we must attempt to view it, in which case it will disappear. So if it has disappeared we can deduce that it did, in fact, exist at one point, but not any more... Until we close the door again.

Irregardless, I just have as a good handle on Quantum Dragons as has I on grammar.

Re:Double check...

[hesiod]

> There was a heavy "beauty quark" when I opened the door last

I always thought Quark was pretty ugly. Of course, you were at a party, so that could explain it. Plenty of times, after parties, I've gone to sleep with a beautiful Bajorin and woken up with Quark.

Re:Double check...

[EverDense]

If it is invisible, can it also be purple? and BTW, it isn't floating, while the dragon may be invisible, the fishing line is quite visible.

Re:Double check...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the planet didn't vaporize when the purple dragon decayed into highly excited barions, mesons, leptons and neutrinos. ;P

Re:Double check...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

You see, it was only a purple dragon to the people it was approaching. Everyone the dragon was moving away from saw it as a green dragon.

the mystery...

[Anonymous Coward]

it was Charles Meson .... or one of the Mesons church, the one from Utah ..

Darl here...

[fishlet]

I've just been informed that Linux software was used in the research and discovery of this new particle. As you are well aware, we own the copyrights to Linux and all derivitive works and discoveries. Therefore, it is my duty to inform you that if make use of the "Mystery Meson" particle in your person, or other earthly posessions... you must purchase a license immediately.

*Sorry, I havn't had my SCO fix lately*

Re:Darl here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try here instead.

Re:Darl here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of SCO, over at Groklaw, it now looks like they may sue Novell over some non-compete clause in their contract, since Novell acquired Suse.

In an ironic twist, I think that Novell would have the rights to terminate SCO's UNIX rights. I would just love to see that...

String theory

[slickwillie]

I guess this is kind of a knotty problem?

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome everyone who will be welcoming our new meson masters.

I for one would welcome if postings like yours would collide with their respective anti-posting before I see them.

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably use that excuse when you piss in the swimming pool too.

Obvious Troll!

[PolyDwarf]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!!!!

Re:Obvious Troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be an atom, duh!

Although as it's seemingly been named by Jar Jar, there's still a chance you can fit a Portman/hot grits joke in there...

Re:Obvious Troll!

[POds]

Sorry, the sub atomic particle overlords dont approve of that!

Re: How do we know they aren't just making this up

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't.

In the words of I.I. Rabi ...

[gcondon]

"Who ordered that?"

Aggregation creates stabilization?

[G4from128k]

I'm not surprised that unsual particles like this are being discovered. Perhaps the long halflife of this particle suggests that aggregation can lead to stablization. In the same way that neutrons are stabilized by protons on the nuclei of everyday matter, I'd bet that mesons can be stabilized either by other mesons or baryons.

Perhaps this won't overturn pre-existing models for elementary particles, but lead to extensions of theories on how aggregates of these particles behave.

Re:Aggregation creates stabilization?

[ameoba]

So, what you're saying is "If you stick a bunch of subatomic particles together, they become more stable". Umm... if you stick enough sub-atomic particles together, won't you eventually get something that's kinda like a nice stable atom?

Re:Aggregation creates stabilization?

[Anonymous Coward]

neutrons are stabilized by protons

it's the other way around. neutrons form a neutral insulator in the nucleus so the protons don't all push away from each other because of their positive charges.

Re:Aggregation creates stabilization?

[evilWurst]

That IS ground-breaking, because normal atoms are never made of the kind of particle they discovered. Atoms made of that could have VERY different properties.

Re:Aggregation creates stabilization?

[Nucleon500]

That's true, but unrelated. Outside the nucleus, neutrons are unstable and have a half-life of about 15 minutes, decaying by emitting an electron and antineutrino to become a proton.

Abstraction

[pubjames]

One thing I'm not clear about when we're talking about sub-atomic particles - how do we know we've got it right? I mean, the idea that these are particles - discrete physical entities if you like - comes from observations of effect and are, as far as I can tell, purely abstractions of what is actually going on. Sometimes abstractions - which of course helps the human mind get understand complex things - can actually mislead. How do we know we've got our thinking right about how sub-atomic particles work?

Re:Abstraction

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the scientific method is that you get a model that works; then, somewhere down the road, you find something new and your model doesn't work anymore, so you change the model.

Our thinking about how subatomic particles work - even to the most basic level that we have "particles" (well, wave packets, but..) that we envision as skittering around interacting and such - is only valid because it works.

The question "Well, then, what is actually going on?" is meaningless. You don't actually know, and so you make better and better models to find out. In the end, you may have a model based on thinking of atoms as little cats; that may not be "what's actually going on", but if it fits experiment then what's the real difference?

Re:Abstraction

[xv4n]

Never argue with a guy who has a high energy accelerator. :)

Re:Abstraction

[jpflip]

That's a deep question, and I guess in some sense we don't know. As with most of science, you accumulate evidence and test your theory. If the theory always gives the right answer, even when you try to prove it wrong a million different ways, then you assume you're on to something (or, at least, you start believing it will probably give you the right answer to your next question). Physicists currently believe that the Standard Model is only an approximation to something a bit deeper - the things we think of as particles might be strings, or something much weirder. But we have such detailed evidence of particle behavior to so many decimal places that we don't think we're far off.

Re:Abstraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we can narrow it down quite a bit using indirect observation. Thanks to Bjorken and Feynman, we have a way of showing that quarks (the subatomic constituents of matter) _must_ be point particles, at least to the smallest length scales we can probe with today's accelerators, e.g. by verifying experimentally that proton cross-sections are the sum of point-particle cross sections for particles with charge 2/3 e, 2/3 e, -1/3 e.

We also have shown that electrons are point particles down to a very small length scale (this is one of the most precisely tested theories in all of science.) In other words, the particles may not be true point particles, and instead have some finite size, but if they are, they are exceedingly small---so small that, as far as we care today, they may as well be point particles.

String theorists say that they are not point particles, but only at length scales that are so small there is no possibility of observing the difference; we'd have to build an accelerator the size of the universe to check.

Re:Abstraction

[Anonymous Coward]

It is an interesting question because we needed something more intangible and that we don't take for granted, such as "subatomic particles" to get to it.

But what about "bigger", more tangible things like, uh, little cats? What makes we think you got'em figured out? What makes we think that we can "figure it out" anyways? Matrix has the "fake world" and the "real world". But what if there is no "real world", no final explanation, no end to the recursion, just a web of "realities" pointing to each other in a crazy random way?

Re:Abstraction

[f97tosc]

One thing I'm not clear about when we're talking about sub-atomic particles - how do we know we've got it right?

As far as scientists are concerned, they got it right when they make predictions that are verified by experiments. Period. Whether it is "true" or a "misleading abstraction" is for the philosophers and the priests to sort out.

In this case, they did not get it right because the new particle was not predicted. This has lead to new hypothesis such as a 4-quark particle. If such an hypothesis acurately predicts the outcome of additional experiements, then it is right enough for the scientists. Some philosophers and the priests may disagree but at least they have to concede that the scientific hypothesis was useful - it predicted a novel phenomenon.

Tor

Re:Abstraction

[Nucleon500]

Are these cat-atoms dead or alive?

Re:Abstraction

[NanoProf]

In physics, names and nomenclature are shorthand for a more precise mathematical description. The usual description of subatomic particles is in terms of quantum field theory, and in QFT one has operators, mathematical constructs that create or destroy one excitation of a quantum field. A field is just a quantity that has a value everywhere in space, like an electric field or magnetic field. In this case, an 'electron field'. Since the number of excitations (or amplitude of the field) comes in discrete integers, there is no way to make half of an electron. The resulting objects are countable, and we refer to those entities as particles. This is unlike the excitation of a classical (non-quantum) wave on a classical string, where the amplitude of the excitation is continuous, not discrete. A guitar string can sound loud or soft or anywhere in between. The amplitude of an electron field has discrete integral values. The particle referred to here is a probably composite object- a bound state of several more fundamental field excitations with a finite lifetime before decay. Once one gets to these small lengthscales, one can't really take much intuition from everyday experience. Instead, one first understands the mathematical description of the experimental phenomena, and then develops intuition about the structure of the mathematics, attaching everyday words to those new mathematical concepts because the everyday meanings of those words have mnemonic value in recalling the appropriate mathematics.

Re:Abstraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Sounds familiar...

[Jon Abbott]

It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before it decays into other longer-lived, more familiar particles.

Maybe this was the sole neuron found in G.W.'s cranium!

(/me straps in for the impending moderation roller coaster)

Re:Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this was the sole neuron found in G.W.'s cranium! In which case, he's got you beat by one..

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[neosake]

Actually, June's Scientific American had an interesting article on The Dawn of Physics beyond the Standard Model.

It's too bad the full text of this article is available only for subscribers :(

Higgs Boson?

[polyp2000]

Apart from the silly names they give to these sub atomic particles, does this mean that we are anywhere nearer to finding the mythical Higgs Boson?

Re:Higgs Boson?

[Anonymous Coward]

in a word, no.

higgs hunt requires either FNAL or LHC at CERN to come on board with higher energy and higher luminosity. these medium energy colliders cannot produce higgs.

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time somebody came up with a Theory of Anything that unifies quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics and all known interactions and particles.

Dear Jesrad,

Great idea, we'll get right on it. Thank God we have you to think of such goals, because we never would have thought to look for a unified theory on our own had you not said something just now.

Sincerely,
Almost Every Physicist Since Einstein

Anyone else

[jayhawk88]

...ever get the feeling that partical physicists are just sharing one big self-delusion?

"Hey Bob, did you hear? Joe discovered a new kind of...uh...Meson!"
"A...Meson? Oh...yeah, Meson, of course. I know what that is."
"Yeah, check out this graph, see that spike right there for 1 billionth-trillionth of a second?"
"Uh...yeah! Yeah, I see it! Right there!"
"No, over there."
"Right! Right over there! Wow, that's great. Well, I'm off to go discover a...uh...new kind of...Foofara?"
"Wow....Foofara huh? Wow...that's awesome...Good Luck!"

Re:Anyone else

[JAHA]

There's certainly merit to this...I worked in an experimental laser lab for a couple years and there were a few times where theories were put forth to explain some observed behavior only to later find out it was a miscalibrated probe, dirty mirror, etc. This is why science is so hard. As a student of physics I don't like that standard model. It seems more like classification than theory to me - but if nothing else it's a stepping stone to something else.

Re:Anyone else

[zCyl]

As a student of physics I don't like that standard model. It seems more like classification than theory to me

The hope of the Standard Model is that if enough things get listed and categorized, some clever person will come along, see a pattern which we will later all consider obvious, and write down where all those categories come from in the first place.

That's how we discovered quarks in the first place. Patterns were noticed in the categories of baryons, and invoking a few quarks explained all those particles.

Re:Anyone else

[Anonymous Coward]

...ever get the feeling that partical physicists are just sharing one big self-delusion?

You mean regarding the spelling of "particle"?

Re:Science is for the foolish

[Anonymous Coward]

Good try.

Points for keeping it relatively brief and trying to fan up the good old religion-science flamware. Where your post fails, however, is in the confrontational religious attitude. It is too transparent to fool a regular Slashdot reader.

Next time, bring in the religion gently. For instance: "while I don't want to ignite a flamewar between scientists and christians, I'm just wondering if the scientists are on a wild goose chase here..." or something like that. That might even get you modded up while getting a nice flamewar thread going on between your fellow trolls and the real Slashdot religious/science nuts.

But how do they.....

[gujju]

......measure or detect a particle that exists for 10^(-54) seconds....I'd say the bigger achievement is being able to detect something that exists for that less time rather than finding something that exists for that less time.
Gujju

Not So

[Anonymous Coward]

If the configuration is anything like

Qurk Anti
Anti Qurk

then each quark is bound to both adjacient antiquarks. There is no
surprise here, so long as neither quark matches either antiquark.

Are physics trying to dump the standard model?

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[jpflip]

"Another Contradiction" is much too strong a statement. The Standard Model has two problems (1) it doesn't play well with gravity, so it can't be the "final answer", and (2) it is so ridiculously successful that no one knows quite where to go next in theoretical particle physics. The SM is more or less able to give the right answer to any question we're able to ask it, right up to the edges of black holes or the first tiny fraction of a second after the birth of the universe. There are some problems too complex for our calculational techniques and approximations (i.e. we can't calculate the physics of many bound states precisely or derive human behavior), but there aren't really any contradictions. The recently reported new particle is more likely to lead us to tell us our calculational approximations aren't very good, rather than that something fundamentally new (though one can always hope!) Particle physicists are always hoping to find something fundamentally wrong with the standard model - it's just an extremely good approximation to the right answer, and until the approximation breaks down you don't know how to improve it.

Just imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

... a Beowulf cluster of these!

strange? well sub-atomic particles are quite strange indeed.

I'm sorry...

[ArmenTanzarian]

"Come check out the mystery Me's on"
- Star Wars VII: Jar-Jar Binks PI

I'm ashamed, moderate this down so other people won't have to hear this in their heads...

Re:Poodle

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not evoloution, it's Elvisloution!

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[cybermace5]

I have it: "Anything is."

Ok, so maybe Schroedinger isn't happy about that, but the cat sure feels a sense of relief.

a secret society?

[unk1911]

is this organization in any way affiliated with the free masons? i guess the masons have moved their operations into the subatomic level as they find new ways to manipulate the world

Study by smashing

[dpilot]

Years back, IBM had an advertisement in Scientific American. It showed a stop-motion picture of a hammer smashing a watch, and pieces flying out. The text said something to the effect of, "Imaging learning how a watch works by smashing it and examining the pieces as they fly out. That's how we do subatomic physics." The gist of the ad was that IBM computers helped in that daunting process.

Can't believe no one said this already

[anthonyclark]

This new particle should be called a Mysteron

Re:Can't believe no one said this already

[fr2asbury]

Except that's probably slated to be the name of AMD's processor at some point. ;-)

Re:Can't believe no one said this already

[Roger W Moore]

I wish I'd discovered it: then it would be called the moore-on :-)

Re:Can't believe no one said this already

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it should be called a mysterion as in 1960's one hit wonder "Question Mark and the Mysterions"

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine a beowulf cluster of those particles.
In Soviet Russia, the atoms smash you!
Worst. Paritcle. Ever.
So is SCO going to sue KEK for IP violations now?
I'd like to see them boot Linux on THAT thing.

Did I miss any?

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[Jesrad]

Dear Coward,

I never said you were not trying, just that you have not yet been successfull.

The queen and GW Gump

[Anonymous Coward]

George Bush met The Queen, and he turns round and says: "As I'm the President, I'm thinking of changing how my country is referred to, and I'm thinking that it should be a Kingdom". To which the Queen replies, "I'm sorry Mr Bush, but to be a Kingdom, you have to have a King in charge - and you're not a King." George Bush thought a while and then said: "How about a Principality then?", to which the Queen replied "Again, to be a Principality you have to be a Prince - and you're not a Prince, Mr Bush". Bush thought long and hard and came up with "How about an Empire then?" The Queen, getting a little T'ed off by now replied " Sorry again, Mr Bush, but to be an Empire you must have an Emperor in charge - and you are not an Emperor." Before George Bush could utter another word, The Queen said: "I think you're doing quite nicely as a Country."

Re:The queen and GW Gump

[wcrowe]

Worst... joke... ever.

Re:The queen and GW Gump

[Anonymous Coward]

Because GW is a count??

towards a unified theory of everything

[unk1911]

it seems like every time we discover a new quark with properties that do not conform to anything we have seen before we move farther away from the unified theory of everything / the long-lived dream of many an astrophysisist. could it be that there is no unified theory? that the world is infinitely complex / mysterious / that there is no system to the madness?

Re:towards a unified theory of everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is a unified theory, but it's just that you have a very mistaken conception of what that unified theory will accomplish. It really won't be anything new - it will be a monument to achievement, and a staggering accomplishment, but in essence, it will really be all the separate facets of physics that we've already begun to build up compiled into one text book, not some all-telling answer to the universe. And it won't be perfect - even when we do have a unified theory of physics, we will spend centuries, and probably millenia, finding it's weaknesses and improving that just like we do our current theories.

Saw this in someone's .sig

[RevMike]

All models are incorrect. Some are useful.

Second only to the Newtonian model, the standard model has been just about the most successful model ever created.

Re:Waste of money

[Brahmastra]

No it's not. Physics research has a lot of benefits. X-Rays, MRI, etc are all consequences of trying to study the atom.

Physicists

[R2.0]

A college Philosophy professor of mine tells a story about high energy physics and the practitioners thereof. He was researching a book on the philosophy of science and was interviewing one of the researchers at Fermilab (I think).

After discussing some of the esoterica of the field, my professor says "Okay. Off the record, do you *actually* believe that some of these particles exist outside of mathematical equations?"

Scientist looks around and replies "Not really. But this stuff is a lot of fun!"

Re:Physicists

[Anonymous Coward]

but what does 'exist outside of mathematical equations?' mean?

of course, some 'particles' are mathematical tricks (e.g Popov ghosts) but this little meson has a clear resonance peak. it exists just as much as anything else does.

I remember (after getting totally confused about renormalisation groups) asking 'ok, but what is the mass of the electron then?' (to the high-powered lecturer, big name in the field). His reply was

"Zero. no, infinite. Er, it depends on your choice of renormalisation group. one of those two anyway".

At some level 'greeness disintegrates' .i.e you can explain why a house is green because it's covered in green paint. But why is the paint green? eventually you need a totally new level of explanation. In physics this is done with mathematics.

Re:Physicists

[gdr]

For a moment there I thought you were going to tell the following joke:

A physics professor came to his dean, "We need another million dollars to upgrade our experimental set."

The dean complains "Why can't you guys be like math department, they only need pens, paper and waste baskets? Or better still the philosophy department, they only need pens and paper."

Re:Physicists

[sashang]

Something like a force, that a lot of us take for granted and accept that it exists is in reality a mathematical abstraction. There is no physical manifestation, I know of, that represents a force. For example, in the case of gravity, we acknowledge that there is a force because we see evidence of it. However as far as I know a tangible force, something that occupies space and has a mass, does not exist.

Re:Physicists

[Goldsmith]

That's a big deal which is still unresolved in physics.

There is the classic debate between Bohr and Einstein in which Einstein argues that quamtum mechanics doesn't obey local causaulity, and Bohr responds by saying that reality doesn't exist on that scale anyway.

The issue has basically stayed there philosophically while experimentally we've moved foward as if there was a physical quantum world, which disobeys all sorts of other things and by and large ignored the philosophical consequences.

For example, if you ever take electromagnetism, ask your professor how much electrical energy is stored in an electron.

Those are the kind of questions that keep us physicists awake at night.

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[Anonymous Coward]

Model!=theory. Models are just a bunch of equations that relate a bunch of variables. They're all pretty patchwork, and they don't actually say anything about what's going on.

Re:Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

It amazes me how some people buy computers & pay for internet connections when they could easily support a homeless family with the money they have spent on those luxuries. Have some cheese...

Re:this is bullshit

[JAHA]

my guess...known velocity, see one trail, see the trail diverge, measure length of original trail, you now have a lifetime.

The mystery could be solved...

[Anonymous Coward]

by someone like Perry Meson.
Haw Haw!

No, but it is quantum mechanics

[jpflip]

In essence, you measure particle lifetimes with a weird version of the uncertainty principle - a particle's energy (mass) multiplied by its lifetime gives (almost) a constant. So a particle like the proton (long-lived, perhaps immortal) has an extremely well-defined mass, while a more ephemeral particle has a broader distribution of masses (its mass isn't precisely defined, it's slightly smeared out). By measuring the particle's mass, therefore, you can estimate its lifetime. You actually do this by looking at spectra, but this is the gist.

Re:No, but it is quantum mechanics

[JAHA]

but that makes no sense in the context of the story...if they estimate lifetime by mass, then how can they comment that it's lifetime "is nearly an eternity for a sub-atomic particle this heavy" - thats circular reasoning

Re:No, but it is quantum mechanics

[Anonymous Coward]

it's also worth noting that this gives the lifetime in our reference frame.

the same particle at rest lasts for much less time. I expect the trillionth thing is at rest, so in our reference frame it could have been measured by the distance travelled (these machines have accurate vertex detection). I can't be bothered to work out what the factor would be, but it could have travelled millimetres, surely?

Re:No, but it is quantum mechanics

[jpflip]

To be fair, I'm not certain which method they used in this experiment - I'd have to check the paper. But the "mass method" works for many short-lived particles because what's measured is actually a sort of a gaussian (normal curve) distribution of masses - there's an average value (the usually-quoted mass) and a spread (a wider spread means a shorter lifetime, by the uncertainty principle argument above). What they're saying is that the particle showed an unusually narrow spread (long lifetime) for a particle with that large a mass (average value).

Re:Science is for the foolish

[Anonymous Coward]

You remind me of my fencing instructor from high school. "Oh, brave soul! Demonstrate your courage and valor on the unrepentant manequin in the corner." '

*coughstrawmencough*

It's believed...

[Anonymous Coward]

That this discovery could lead to smaller, faster compters in the future.

Re:Oblig

[tuffy]

I for one welcome everyone who will be welcoming our new meson masters.

Perhaps it should be named the Free Meson.

Re:this is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

At extremely high velocities, partcles existing even for such short times will travel a measurable distance. If you've ever seen the photographic plates taken from particle accellerators, you see all the loops and twists. Those plates are generated over the course of no more than one or two picoseconds.

Re:Waste of money

[Alioth]

I'm sure you could have said that when it was discovered you could accelerate electrons off a cathode in a vacuum. However, you now have a very good electron accelerator in your living room - your TV's picture tube.

The discovery of strange subatomic particles may seem irrelevant right now, but they may well be the link we need to cure disease, or prevent hunger.

Your sort of reasoning is incredibly short sighted, and it's a good job that the people who fund physics research don't subscribe to your point of view, or our homes would still be lit by gas lamps.

All Hail!

[cyranoVR]

I, for one, welcome our new Meson Overlords!

Re:All Hail!

[POds]

do you like repeating this stupid jokes? if i can call it a joke!

Re:Waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Trillions of dollars are spent every year on medical research. In all areas, there's only so much advancement you can produce, and increasing money spent in those areas only leads to wasted money and no research benefit. Throwing more money at cancer and AIDS will not make much difference in curing them - we're already throwing more money at them then at most other areas of science combined.

Re:this is bullshit

[jpflip]

That's the way things are done for lower-mass particles (muons, pions, etc.), but heavier ones with even shorter lifetimes still don't travel a measurable distance and have to have their lifetimes measured as in my post above.

Billionth of a trillionth...

[Mr Smidge]

exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second

Bah, I've seen quicker..

But seriously, is time quantized? If so, what's the smallest unit?

The revolution begins

[buback]

Hurrah! down with the standard model!

Warp speed and time travel might yet be possible!

Re:The revolution begins

[Anonymous Coward]

who said the standard model ruled out warp speed and time travel? ::insert schrodinger's alive/dead cat::

nothing is real

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.

Particles are teh suck.
Then something about Natalie Portman and hot grits... there are just too many sheepisms to recall.

Re:this is bullshit

[fuzzeli]

One would imagine they measured it using a kitchen time shaped like a pear.

dumbass.

How are we able to measure...

[clifgriffin]

anything that lasts only a billionth of a trillionth of a second?

Re:How are we able to measure...

[Zirnike]

I used an egg timer.

Quantized time

[Mr Smidge]

Wow, I've learnt how to answer my own questions..

Question

Is time quantized?

Asked by: Chris Ingram

Answer

I guess that the simplest answer to this would be: 'Yes, everything is quantized.' However, unfortunately this is one of the biggest problems in modern physics. No-one is really sure how it should be quantized but the idea of quantized time as well as quantized space and quantized gravity is part of the elusive theory of quantum gravity.

Some of the best minds in the world have been tackling the problem for years now. Einstein failed to united quantum theory with his own relativity, Richard Feynman couldn't do it (although QED was a definite step forwards) and even today some of our most famous physicists such as Kip Thorne, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose are still unable to unite quantum theory and relativity.

In answer to your question then. Yes, time is theoretically quantized and in an ultimate field theory it would be a quantized field much the same as the particle fields that we can already see in unified field theories. However, no-one has yet been able to come up with a consistent theory of space, time, fields and matter which shows exactly how time is quantized.

Answered by: Edward Rayne, Physics Undergraduate Student, Cambridge UK

Re:Quantized time

[Jon Abbott]

Even though you've found an answer, you may still want to read about "Planck time", which is the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning (under our current understanding of Physics, that is).

How long?

[Zathrus]

exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second

So, exactly how long is that? In the US, that would be 10e-21 seconds. But this is being reported by the BBC, and most of the English speaking world outside of the US doesn't consider 1 billion = 1000 million (instead it's 1 million million). So is it 10e-21 seconds or 10e-36 seconds (if I did my math right, which I probably didn't)? That's a rather large difference, and I couldn't find a definitive reference in any of the linked articles or PhysicsWeb.

That said, how do you detect particles that exist for this short a period of time anyway?

Re:How long?

[JAHA]

ummm...how about a reference for that? I don't think that is accurate. A billion is 10^9 everywhere.

Re:How long?

[clifgriffin]

Wrong, there are no British "billionaires" because in Britain, a billion is a million millions. Now in terms of physics...I'm not sure what is being referred to here.

Re:How long?

[Hoi Polloi]

"That said, how do you detect particles that exist for this short a period of time anyway?"

I would guess based either on the distance it travels and/or the momentum of it's decay particles.

Re:How long?

[JAHA]

ok, I acquiesce - thats almost unbelievable - but true.

Re:How long?

[kiwimate]

By common agreement, the American convention of a billion = 1,000,000,000 is used in professional contexts. More information from here:

How many is a billion?

If you are American, it is undoubtedly 1,000,000,000. This amount is known to traditionally minded British people as `a thousand million', and by some more adventurous ones as a 'milliard', though this word has not made as much headway in English as in some other European languages. A trillion is then 1,000,000,000,000, and so on.

If you are British, on the other hand, a billion may be 1,000,000,000,000 (a million million), following the older convention.

If you are neither British nor American, you can take your pick! (Both systems were invented by the French, but are called 'British' and 'American' for convenience.)

Once the business world and the financial press found themselves discussing `thousand millions' so much, the 'American' system simply became more convenient, despite a certain lack of logical tidiness. (A 'British' trillion is the third power of a million, while the 'American' one is the fourth power of a thousand, and the 'American' system continues out of sync with the arithmetic). It also makes the profits sound bigger! The 'American' system is now standard use in British government publications, and is becoming the norm in many other languages.

For what it's worth, I grew up in New Zealand, and I have always considered a billion to be a million million (the British system), but have known from my physics and maths classes to use a thousand million in these contexts. So, how's that? Clear as mud?

Re:How long?

[Idarubicin]

I would guess based either on the distance it travels and/or the momentum of it's decay particles.

Assuming the longest possible billionth of a trillionth of a second (1E-21 seconds), and assuming that the particle was travelling at the speed of light (3E8 meters per second), the particle would travel about 3E-13 metres, or 300 femtometres, before decaying. Hydrogen atoms are about three hundred times larger. Even if its relativistic speed extends its apparent lifetime quite significantly, it's still going to decay before it reaches any sort of detector.

Particle physicists have had to look at decay products (their masses, charges, and momenta) to identify new species for quite a while now. It's quite an art to predict what the decay products are of a new particle. It's also a probability game to look at decay products and demonstrate that they are the likely result of your particle of interest. Since you're not directly observing your new particle, you have to be able to demonstrate the likelihood that its putative decay products aren't just due to coincidence.

Re:How long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your questions have already been answered, but I'll clear it up a bit.

There are two ways to tell how long your particle existed. From the momenta of the decay particles, you can infer your particle's mass & momentum, and thus it's velocity. You also know where the particle originated (wherever the beams collide), and where it split up (the intersection of the trajectories of the decay particles). Thus, you know the speed and the travel distance which gives you the lifetime (must correct for relativistic time-dilation).

For very heavy, short lived particles - it is difficult to use this method because 1) their velocity is small because momentum = mass * velocity and mass is big. 2) they die too fast. So it barely goes anywhere before it decays. In this case you look at the width of the mass (=energy) of the particle instead. To do this, you need to measure many of these particles to get good statistics. The energy you measure must obey the heisenberg uncertainty relation, so the width of the energies you observe times the lifetime of the particles is proportional to plank's constant. If you can measure enough particles you get the width, and therefore the lifetime.

Re:How long?

[Anonymous Coward]

The line width (Gamma) was reported as 1.4 +/- .7 MeV. From the uncertainty principle,

tau = hbar/Gamma = (6.6 x 10^-22 MeV s )/(1.4 MeV)
= 4.7 x 10^-21 s.

So the lifetime is determined indirectly by measuring the width of the resonance in the energy spectrum.

Re:How long?

[Anonymous Coward]

You detect them by observing the effects that the daughter particles create inside the detector.
BELLE is constituted by several detectors that are sensitive to electrically charged particles, muons, hadrons, etc. You can thus measure the momentum and energy of the daugther particles to find from which kind of particles they came from. As you know the energy of the two colliding leptons (the electron and positron), and just have to balance the equation, according to the theory (you know which kind of particle decays into what)
Problem is that you have millions of events detected every second, so it is quite tricky to know which trace actually matches another.
I do think that the results here have been verified and huge number of times, and I'd be curious to see the actual datas that forbid to drop it as "false positive" , it must really be rock-hard.

Gee, I'd never have though my master in Particle Physics at BELLE would allow me to socialize one day ! :)

Uh-oh!

[FrostedWheat]

This is the voice of the Mystery Mesons.... we know that you can hear us, Earthmen.

Coming soon from Apple..

[FinestLittleSpace]

...The iMeson... massively expensive, but only the weight of one tiny Helium Atom! Fits right into your back pocket and kicks the butt out of Windows XP!

What's that you say? "Not Possible"?! Well of course it is, Steve Jobs swears by it, and more to the point, keeps one in his back pocket at all times! How can you refuse?!

Buy it now at the Apple Store (nowhere else as we're a monopoly - the good kind) for only $49999.99!

For real physics look here

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you interested in reading the actual paper, have a look at http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0309032 Warning: Contains sentenses like "We determine a ratio of product branching fractions" and "measurement of the width for this decay channel" - scary stuff!

Here's a . . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

.....link.........

Re:Waste of money

[POds]

Yer, but this is more interesting, plus, if we did that, the poor scientests would be out of a job and hence homless and hungry...

This is why I love slashdot moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

They are always modding karma-whores with trivial posts up.

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

All your mesons are belong to Fermilab.

1) Build an atom smasher.

2) Find a new mystery meson.

3) ???

4) Profit!

Quoting from the FA ...

[A nonymous Coward]

Scientists have found a sub-atomic particle they cannot explain using current theories of energy and matter.

The Japanese team says understanding its existence may require a change to the Standard Model, the accepted theory of the way the Universe is constructed.

But X(3872) is peculiar in that it does not fit easily into any known particle scheme and, as a result, has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the world's physics community.

However, again, X(3872) does not match theoretical expectations for any conceivable quark-antiquark arrangement.

To explain it, theoretical physicists may have to modify their theory of the colour force; or make X(3872) the first example of a new type of meson, one that is made from four quarks (two quarks and two antiquarks).

Sacred Cows

[dokhebi]

Which Sacred Cows of Physics will this kill?

Just my $0.02 worth...

The philosphy of Science: how we know what we know

[hpulley]

How do we know these guys aren't just making this all up???

I seriously suggest you take a course on the philosophy of science. Not ethics of science, that's interesting but not the same. I took it out of interest and it ended up being the most important course I took. The philosophy of science teaches you how we can know if we know what we know, how we can know it and why we can know it works better than junk like Astrology. Having to disprove astrology is harder than it sounds.

If you don't think you need a course guided by a professor (guidance is advised), check out these references. In the end you'll find that we cannot say for certain that we know anything but that we exist (existentialism, see a lexicon.

He isn't invisible

[burgburgburg]

You just have to look at the purple dragon by squinting through the sides of your eyes when nobody else is around. Then you can spend hours alone in your garage watching the purple dragon floating freely. It's not a bad life for either one of you.

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I don't think it tells us anything about the standard model, other than to point out our lack of computational power. I'm guessing that no one thought of a quadraquark (I just made that up, So archive.org take notice. I coined the phrase) and even if they did, they wouldn't beable to show that it was or was not theoretically possible. But, that in itself could be telling us that the Standard model isn't good enough to predict new particles before we run across them.

Its nice to see....

[Craig3010]

...that Jar Jar finally got a job as a particle physicist

+14 Funnier than God

[fenix down]

You are a fucking genius.

can't help myself...

[TopShelf]

~~~ diddly doo - diddly doo - diddly doo ~~~

(as we head further and further back...)

Ugh! Cro-Magnons over there getting all the best meat, but they bring no fire that I see. It like Ugar over there banging rocks together! Any fool know that fire come from sky, not from rocks and stones.

Me say build many many fire pits and fill them with kindling. When great fire strikes come from sky, it sure to hit one of them, which we can use to light others and always have fire. That would help whole tribe, and we can do it NOW.

~~~ diddly doo - diddly doo - diddly doo ~~~

Preprint of the article

[poszi]

For those interested, here is the preprint

The article will be published in Physical Review Letters.

British dumped their definition of 1 billion

[lordpixel]

No. Its been a while since 1 billion = 1 million million was common usage in Britain.

We use 1000 Million like the US now. Well, I'm sure there are *some people* who don't. You know how people get attached to archaic measurements. But the common usage is 1000 Million.

Re:British dumped their definition of 1 billion

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the Netherlands we use 'miljoen' (million), 'miljard' (thousand million) and 'biljoen' (million million). And after that, 'triljoen' (million million million) and 'quadriljoen' (million million million million) and so forth. To me this seems more logical as the quantities follow Latin counting, ie. 1m^2 = bi, 1m^4 = quadri.

Re:British dumped their definition of 1 billion

[kirinyaga]

Same in france : million, milliard then n-illion is million power n. I always thought it was the standard used for the international metric system (and thus most of scientific numbers). Is it or not ?

by the way, that will make a billionth trillionth second = 1E-6 ^ (2+3) = 1E-30s, not 1E-36.

Well, since it's so rare...

[jlowery]

... it's probably made up of quirks instead of quarks.

Graviton

[Aqua OS X]

Could this be the graviton string theorists are looking for?

Re:Graviton

[Daniel_Staal]

Nope. A graviton is massless. This has a mass (a fairly big one too.)

So THAT's what it is...

[maiden_taiwan]

"It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second...."

Ah, scientists have discovered George Bush's attention span.

Re:So THAT's what it is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe someone will declare it a new unit of time,
the dubya

The Irony of Feedback Loops

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, if the US didn't have said government, it wouldn't need to be defended against terrorist attacks, because there would be no American military presence in the Middle East to inspire Osama as well as no American support of Israeli occupation of traditionally Arab territories and oppression of their own Christian and Islamic citizens to inspire most of the other terrorists.

Re:The Irony of Feedback Loops

[Anonymous Coward]

There's plenty of Jews in Israel for them to blow up, right?

Re:The Irony of Feedback Loops

[Anonymous Coward]

osama is pissed that its not the 14th century.

the fanatics of islam wish it was the 14th again, and they hate anything progressive.

Possible deconstruction of X3872

[cyrek]

Time for me to make up something plausible sounding:

• A Neutron (udd) decays into a Proton (uud) and an electron (e-) (plus one or two other things that I intend to ignore for simplicity's sake). So we could conclude that a down quark (d) is an up-quark (u) plus the attributes of an electron.
• Turn that on its head and say that an electron is a down-quark (d) less the attributes of an up-quark, or plus the attributes of of an anti-up quark (u-bar).
• A down-quark plus an anti-up as a meson is a positive pion (pi+).
• One of the decay modes of the positive pion includes a muon (mu-), the big brother of the electron.
• The equivalent decay state of the negative pion (pi-) emits an anti-muon (mu+).
• There is a short lived pseudo-atom that resembles Hydrogen called Positronium that is an electron and positron co-orbiting.
• If an electron and a positron can co-orbit for a short while, then there is no reason to suppose a muon and an anti-muon cannot do the same...
• Maybe pions that decay into leptons (i.e. muons) can do the same sort of thing before they decay.
• So the mooted structure of X3872, the 'pion-anti-pion' positronium-like (c-bar,u)-(u-bar,c) [where (c) is a 'charm' quark, the big brother of the up-quark and (x-bar,y) represents quarks in a separate pion-like particle] doesn't seem so bizarre after all.

Hmm. That seemed so much more logical in my head...

Re:Possible deconstruction of X3872

[Anonymous Coward]

# A down-quark plus an anti-up as a meson is a positive pion (pi+)

nope, that would be a pi-

# One of the decay modes of the positive pion includes a muon (mu-), the big brother of the electron.

you mean, mu+ (don't forget to conserve charge!)

# The equivalent decay state of the negative pion (pi-) emits an anti-muon (mu+).

should be mu-

# If an electron and a positron can co-orbit for a short while, then there is no reason to suppose a muon and an anti-muon cannot do the same...

absolutely, mu-onium

# So the mooted structure of X3872, the 'pion-anti-pion' positronium-like (c-bar,u)-(u-bar,c) doesn't seem so bizarre after all

yup, but there is a difference between a D-Dbar molecule and a four quark bound state. in any case, the interest is in trying to figure out just what it is.

note there are actually several other particles which have been observed which are hard to intrerpret. for example, there is a particle called the sigma, which has a mass of about 600 MeV (compared to 3872 MeV for the X), which is the subject of a lot of speculation, but could, amongst other things, be a pi-pi molecule.

Not String Theory: QCD

[Roger W Moore]

This probably has nothing to do with string theory (or supersymmetry as one person suggested). Instead it has everything to do with something called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).

QCD is the theory that describes the strong nuclear force, one of the four (that we know of) fundamental forces of nature. The problem is that the standard mathematical approach for dealing with fields (quantum field theory) uses something called perturbation theory. Unfortunately this breaks down for QCD because perturbation theory assumes that the field strength drops with decreasing energy whereas for QCD it actually increases! This means that the incredible complexity of all the low energy interactions is very important when making calculations of physics processes and this makes it impossible to do the calculations without making approximations.

So, while this result is interesting, and certainly needs to be explained by the theorists, the most likely outcome will be a correction to one of the approximations they made when doing their QCD calculations and is unlikely (though it's still possible) to be anything fundamental.

Evidence of Supersymmetry on the otherhand would be a truly major discovery with implications not only for particle physics but for cosmology as well: we still don't know what makes up 96% of the Universe and SUSY could explain some of that missing energy. It's also a requirement of Superstrings that SUSY exists, though perhaps not at the energies where we can access it in an accelerator.

Tell me

[UrgleHoth]

Are you really Sheldon Glashow?

wow that's quick!

[mjh]

It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second

Ok, that's a really tiny number. That's a decimal point followed by 20 zeros, and then a 1:

0.000000000000000000001

or

1x10e-21

To understand this in a slightly different way, if we changed the scale of time and stretched the life of this mystery meson 1 second, a normal second would get stretched to 31.7 trillion years! Or put another way: the life of this particle is to 1 second, as 1 second is to 31.7 trillion years.

Just out of curioustiy, how in the world do we measure anything that exists for that short of a time?

Re:wow that's quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

>Just out of curioustiy, how in the world do we measure anything that exists for that short of a time?

OK, I'm not an expert, so the following may be wrong, but as I understand it, the method is a bit like the following:

As most people know, the Heisenburg uncertianty principle states that DxDp > h where D means 'uncertianty in', x is position p is momentum and h is plank's constant. Using p = hk (k is wavenumber ~ 1/wavelength) and E = hf (f is frequency ~ 1/time), we can get an uncertianty relatioship between energy (E) and time (t):

DEDt > h

That derivation is a bit loose, but the essential result is what we need. Rearranging this, we get:

Dt > h/DE

If we identify Dt with the timetime of the particle then we can see that the lifetime is proportional to 1/the uncertianty in the particle energy. It turns out that the uncertianty in the particle energy is pretty easy to measure; you just run the accelerator at slightly different energies and see how many particles you get formed at each energy (this is the 'width of the resonance curve'). Moreover, the wider the resonance curve, the shorter the lifetime of the particle (large DE means small Dt). Therefore, short lifetimes are actually *easier* to measure via this method than longer lifetimes.

For the cyncical:
No that derivation's not complete, and skips lots of details. That's why I can get away with missing out all sorts of factors and end up with an inequality not an equality. If you want a better derivation, look in a book for the Breit-Wigner resonance formula.

Re:wow that's quick!

[Montreal Geek]

Usually, by how far it travels before it goes poof.

Basically, it is possible to know how fast it's going (simple mechanics) and it is possible to see (or deduce) where it came into being and where it disintegrated into bits-- measure the distance between them and you have time.

It's a really really short time, but particles ejected from a collision in a particle accelerator are going really really fast-- they get to cover some distance in that short interval.

-- MG

Re:wow that's quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

To the observer these particles are going at about 3e8 m/s. Multiply that by 1e-20 seconds and you get a distance of 3e-12 meters or 0.03 Angstroms. That's much larger than an atomic nucleus but much smaller than the typical size of an atom.

Of course if you take into account that the particles lifetime will be dilated (hundreds? thousands of times?) by special relativistic effects it will live much longer from our point of view and travel a much longer distance before going poof.

Re:wow that's quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually, by how far it travels before it goes poof.

for longer lived particles you can do that. for example, the lifetime of the B mesons which decay to X(3872) and a kaon can be measured in that way. but for shorter lived particles the uncertainty principle is used.

the uncertainty principle tells us that DE * Dt ~ h, where DE is the uncertainty in the accuracy of an energy measurement, Dt is the accuracy a time measurement and h is Planck's constant (Dp * dz ~ h maybe more familiar, and is basically the same thing). since E=mc^2, the uncertainty of the energy measurement is related to the uncertainty of the mass measurement. as you can tell from the number of significant figures of the mass of X(3872), the mass is rather well-defined - hence the particle is long-lived.

correspondingly, strongly decaying (short-lived) particles have large natural widths (poorly defined masses).

[above explanation is not the most rigorous, but basic ideas are correct.]

Celebrity Lawsuit Pending

[LiberalApplication]

Next on Entertainment Tonight: overnight particle physics sensation D Meson X(4158) is threatening legal action against the popular tabloid, "Physics Review" for what it claims is "misleading representation" of its relationship with D Meson X(1924), which it has recently been spotted interacting strongly with at the posh KEK Tsukuba Positron-Electron Supercollider in Japan. X(4158)'s lawyers also stated that further intrusions into the popular particle's privacy by the subatomic paparazzi would not be tolerated, and that a particle's spin-orientation is none of your business.

Re:Celebrity Lawsuit Pending

[h0mer]

Do you make horrible jokes all by yourself, or do you get help from your parents?

Re:Celebrity Lawsuit Pending

[aminorex]

This is funnier than its moderation, but
I can't help complaining that mesons don't
interact strongly.

Re:Celebrity Lawsuit Pending

[LiberalApplication]

I can't help complaining that mesons don't interact strongly.

That's why it's so scandalous ;-)

The SSC was much cheaper than the ISN or moonbase

[cquark]

The price for building the SSC was a small fraction of the cost for even the limited International Space Station we actually built, much less the original planned ISN they kept in the budget the year Congress axed the SSC. Spending a few billion on the SSC, which was guaranteed to either give us the Higgs boson or prove the Standard Model wrong (the exciting if unlikely option) and thus provide some new basic science strikes me as a much better investment than tens of billions on the politically motivated ISN. I'm willing to invest money on real space science (Hubble, Galileo, many others), but too much money that supposedly for science goes to political stunts like the Moon landing instead of projects of actual scientific value. I'm not sure how practical generating power on the moon is and beaming power down has obvious security implications.

For the poster who asked about how old the Standard Model is and why we haven't seen applications, the Standard Model was created in the 1970's so it's very young by physics standards. We're just beginning to deal with the implications of quantum mechanics for silicon chips and the basics of that area of physics were established in the 1920's. Technology lags physics by a substantial amount of time. However, the physics of particle accelerators themselves has led to enormous advances in medicine and manufacturing as such techniques are used to look inside the human body for disease as well as inside microprocessors for defects, so it's been far from useless even from a shortsighted perspective.

It's obvious what the particle is

[Anonymous Coward]

it's half of a Krispy Kreme donut.

Guns and butter

[amightywind]

Too bad the US cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider some years back.

Why? It cost too much.

The cancellation of the SSC was regretable, but particle physics in the U.S. has forged ahead without it. Between Brookhaven and FermiLab there have been remarkable advances in the last decade - detection of the quark/gluon plasma at Brookhaven comes to mind.

Re:Waste of money

[Roger W Moore]

Hmmmm....you might just want to think about what you just did. First you typed a message into a computer. Computers only exist because of the understanding of quantum physics that was discovered at the turn of the last century by the particle physicists of the day. True it was ~50 years before quantum theory was applied to silicon allowing the development of semi-conductors but without that initial blue-skies research you can kiss goodbye to every piece of electronic equipment that you own.

Second you posted the messge you just wrote onto a website that would not exist if it weren't for CERN developing a tool to help us particle physicists communicate.

So before you go making comments like that perhaps its worth remembering how you are even actually ABLE to make comments! Now I suppose the next thing would be to discuss how far you think all the research to cure diseases would get without any computers or modern electronics. However there are even more direct applications of fundamental physics to medicine: MRI, PET, X-rays etc not to mention accelerators being used to kill brain tumours.

As I hope that you can now see "blue sky", fundamental research does not always have immediate applicability but in the long run its the reason that we are able to keep making major breakthroughs in other fields.

Re:The philosphy of Science: how we know what we k

[jo42]

Ah. Good. Someone who has caught on to the depth of my question...

Remember, at one time, our Scientists and Religious leaders said the Earth was flat and in the middle of the Universe...

I am who I am that I am.

10e-21

[poszi]

So, exactly how long is that? In the US, that would be 10e-21 seconds.

In the article they show width of 2.3 MeV. 1 MeV is about 10e-21s so it is about half of 10e-21s.

I wish...

[jav1231]

I had an anti-quirk for each of my quirks!

How are meson's new?

[PierceLabs]

StarTrek's been rambling on about them for years :)

Was I the only one???

[QQ2]

Was I the only one who glanced at the text and read The Tsukuba Mesa factory Instead of the meson
(And am I the only one half expecting to see some kind of story about how this facility opend the door for the aliens?)

Re:Was I the only one???

[matrix_alien]

You know what. I did too and did a double-take. Too much Half-life on the brain.

Warp ...

[zummit]

Allz I wanna know is, when are the Warp Engines coming online???

Re:The philosphy of Science: how we know what we k

[linzeal]

Anything by Karl Popper will get you started in the modern vein of the philosophy of science.

Tinfoil Hat

[Sotogonesu]

I wouldn't want anything outside the standard model to get into my head. Will a tinfoil hat protect me from stray X(3872)'s?

Re:The SSC was much cheaper than the ISN or moonba

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets even nastier when you realize that the ISN (which I agree seems to be a major waste) costs about as much as one year of war and peace keeping in Iraq.

Odd the priorities that we Americans seem to have.

Top Quarks!

[t0ny]

I heard a rumor that if you mix two of them, you get a Top Quark...

exponents

[RedA$$edMonkey]

"and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before it decays"

Is it just me or wouldn't it be nice if they just said 10^-21 seconds instead. I'd assume that just about everyone who would give a rat's ass about teany tiny ephemeral particles would know something about exponents. I'm personally a little sick of reporters simplifying all this crap because they assume everyone has a 3rd grade education.

Oh Yeah...

[Barkmullz]

as well as a large calibration signal from the well-known and conventional particle psi-prime(3686)

Oh, the psi-prime(3686)...why didn't you say so right away...

Re:The SSC was much cheaper than the ISN or moonba

[aminorex]

Chopping off your arm is much
less disabling than chopping off your
head. Should you therefore chop off
your arm?

you... DON'T:P

[qrash]

There's always a possibility that a dragon appears for that time interval in your garage, according to Quantum mechanics.

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

That was funny!

Stupid mods!

Re:US Research x1488

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right. Lets spend billions of dollars so a bunch of scientists can use a lot of juice to smash stuff together, and see what comes out.

How about no. How about we give the same amount to individual researchers with more innovation or inspiration?

Re:The philosphy of Science: how we know what we k

[imsabbel]

Religous leader told shit since the dawn of time. Thats their job.
And I dont think you really believe the myth that before kolumbus they thought the earth was flat?
In fact he was rediculed for his underestimation of the diameter of earth, and if he hadnt been lucky hitting america he would have died without foot on his way to much-further-than-he-thought-away india...

I dub this particle..

[Laconian]

the JESUS particle!

Link to a preprint of the PRL

[menscher]

http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/hep-ex/0308044

Re:WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

J/Psi has charge 0 you asshole. Don't make me come over there and shove a fistful of anti-top quarks up your nose.

Particle Physicists created the World Wide Wide.

[msevior]

I'm amazed that no here on slashdot has said this in this context.

Tim Burness-Lee invented the World-Wide-Web at CERN to enhance the ability of Particle Physicists to collaborate.

Particle Physicists are also making a huge investment of time and money to improve GRID computing.

Particle Physicits were the first to use large clusters of Unix Workstations to do large scale computation.

The list goes on...

But the point of Particle Physics is to find out more about the Universe. Along the way we've done more than our fair share to benefit all mankind.

Re:WRONG!

[Sdoh]

(c, c(bar), u, d(bar)) //charge +1.

Fits the SM and should go by EM to D D*+ .

Everything's a particle by definition

[kavau]

The concept of a "particle" in subatomic physics is actually not as clear-cut as our everyday intuition about the meaning of the word. Pretty much every manifestation of energy that is reasonably stable can be called a "particle".

As an example, if you consider the bound state formed by a single electron and a proton (also called a Hydrogen atom), the situation is clear-cut: The rest energy of the electron and proton are so much larger than their binding energy, that you call the electron and proton "elementary particles" of the system, and attribute the difference in energy to them being in a "bound state". But what if the binding energy is of the same order of magnitude as the rest energies of the involved particles (as can happen, afaik, in subnuclear physics)? Suddenly it's not clear which of the three "objects" involved you should call "elementary particles", and which you should call the "bound state" between these.

I notice I'm rambling here. Well, the upshot is, that sometimes it's really hard to decide what to call an elementary particle, and what not. But as a rule of thumb, if you notice something that contains energy, and splits up into a bunch of known particles some time later, it can be only one of two things: either it's a bound state of known elementary particles, or if that's not possible, because a proper combination cannot be found, it must be a new elementary particle.

Of course, before throwing the (rather successful, albeit incomplete) standard model overboard, the proper course of action is to wait for their results to be confirmed by at least one other group.

This confirms it...

[krbvroc1]

there is truth to the conspiracy that we are all controlled by the invisible force of the 'free mesons'.

Incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

> Actualy Nobel Prizes have to be awarded for work of some practicality

Only if you count basic research as practical. For example, the 2002 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for work in astrophysics, in particular detection of neutrinos and cosmic X-ray sources. (http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/nobel/nobel2 002.html)

Of course, you're welcome to explain how neutrino detection is "a work of some practicality". Having worked on neutrino experiments, I'd be interested in seeing your explanation. :)

ante up - by busta ryhmes

[Anonymous Coward]

"they think it is most likely to be a combination of four quarks - charm/anti-charm and up/anti-up"

Ante Up

[busta Ryhmes]
attention Please, Attention Please!!
this Shit Here Feels Like A Whole Entire World Collapsed!
motherfuckerrrrrrrrrr! Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (yeah) Yeah!
yeah (yeah) Yeah (yeah) Yeah (yeah)
buck (buck) Buck (buck) Buck (buck) Buck (buck) Buck

busta Rhymes Now, M.o.p. Now
what You Want Now? (what You Want Now?)
what You Want Now? (what You Want Now?)
what You Want Now? (what You Want Now?)
what You Want Now?
(what You Want Want Want Want Want Want Buck Buck)

ante Up!! No, Cut That Fool!
they Want To Act Stupid Gun-butt That Fool
when I Cock That Tool, Nigga Run Your Damn Jewels
'fore We Fuck Around And Lay You Up In Your Own Blood Pool, Nigga
hunt You Down Nigga, Run Your Ass Down
unleash The Hounds Til Them Niggaz'll Gun Your Ass Down (stop It)
you Frontin Like This Was A Thing Of The Past
with Tattoos Over The Scars A Nigga Left On Your Ass!
my Niggaz Think Lopsided, Bust They Gat Cross-sided
in The Subways They Rob Trains Runnin Along-side It!
(buck Buck) See Motherfucker We Don't Play With That Shit
and If You Want Your Shit Back You Had To Pay For That Shit!
you Little Costume Niggaz, Romper-room Niggaz
get You In The Night Or Early In The Afternoon Niggaz
we Takin Your Whole Shit While We Pass Through
even The Shirt Off Your Back, Nigga Run That Too
the rest

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[iamnotarapperyo]

what if anything isn't?

what if the box is opened and the cat isn't there?

Re:Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new particle overlords
Cowboy Neil is my favorite particle

Seems to be the day for new discoveries...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Router's News Service -

New Element Discovered.

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.

Scientific Notation, please!

[Guppy06]

"exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second"

Remember, people: "billion" and "trillion" mean very different things to people in different English-speaking parts of the world. Exponents and/or SI prefixes are the proper way to express numbers like this.

Meson Ikkoku

[dnab]

in Japanese, Ikkoku = an instant, moment, brevity

the brilliant Japanese theoretical physicist Rumiko Takahashi had predicted and described the interactions of 10 such particles in this monumental QCD paper published in the early 80's. We are witnessing only the tip of this experimental ice berg.

Particle 0: Otonashi

Large Hadron Go Go GO!!!

Search for... uh...

[HiggsBison]

the hunt is on for the so called "Higgs particle" for example

Try not to use the word "hunt". You're scaring me.

Anyhow, (ahem!):
C'mon people! It's not rocket science!
C'mon people! It's not brain surgery!
(I think that had to be said. I'll wander off now.)

OK, so...

[HiggsBison]

I am happy to see that Beauty and Truth are still in use

I think those are the Canadian names.
Beauty, eh?

If this new particle is really big, maybe they can name it the moose particle, eh?

I love you, Sdoh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome response. You are my hero.

Re:Another nail in the Standard Model's coffin

[Urkki]

If you can do that, you're eligile for either a Nobel or a Milbourne Christopher Award...

Re:Do what?

[chedderslam]

Although Colby can be a delightful cheese experience, I think that we can all agree that the cheese of choice for any true connoisseur is cheddar. That golden hue, that unmistakable taste and smell, a truly great cheese indeed. Now, I can understand the pressure of a first post attempt and the oversight is forgiven, but please, remember the cheddar in the future. Or, if you prefer, in the future, please remember the chedder.

da big TV ...

[Anonymous Coward]

i dinna believe it!
err ... yeah give up.

just a small note (ehem):

these "particles" are really really
small, right? and you have to err..
build big maschines and err have
really really strong magnets. ehm...
is this a natural setting? def.
doesn' sound like it.
i mean these "collisions" take
place in the sun or blackholes or ...
all the time but this is a universal
process right? i mean these particles
colliding is like their "karma"?
i mean in autum leafs tend to fall
to the ground but you can spray
agent orange and de-leafe the
tree the whole year over (unless
it already naturally got rid of
its leafs). my point is like always
with this particel physics stuff
is that because it costs so
much with no reward is that it must
be critiised: are you created
particles NATURAL or FAKE? meaning
of FAKE would be: the univers these
particle have been created in are not
the real univers but the accelerator
maschine which would make these particle
acctually only living in the accelerator
maschine AND the real univers since the
maschine exists in the real univers. but
the particles are FAKE! they need
the accelerator to exist!!
sumthing along that line of argueing
should get does taxpayers billions going
somehere -MORE- usefull maybe ...

anyway they found that the moon had
influence on there experimental
results ... ok so the solarflares
could have too? what about that gravity
wave/well of the blackhole in the center
of our galaxy? does that mabe have
a influence too? would the results be
different if conducted in zero-gravity
(def. zero gravity not suspended in
circular (orbit) motion but REAL zero
gravity. like no bends in space AT
all...) etc ...
da aceelerator and the detector are
just the cathode ray tube and the
flourescent screen of a BIG BIG BIG Tv. :) can't see what's so fundamental ...

Re:da big TV ...

[Zeriel]

Come back and post again when you're literate.