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

Oh, Man...

[Steve B]

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

Skin deep?

[Citizen of Earth]

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

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

Here's the press release

[Pingular]

from the Institute of Physics

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[Rasta Prefect]

Standard Model? How many applications has it produced?

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

Paging Mr. Arthur Dent...

[smack_attack]

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

That is all.

String Theory

[attobyte]

So what does this mean for the String Theory?

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!

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

[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: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: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?

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.

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?

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: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.

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.

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

[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: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 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.

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.

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: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

[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.