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SELEX at Fermilab Discovers New Particle
sellthesedownfalls writes "Scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will announce on Friday, June 18 the observation of an unexpected new member of a family of subatomic particles called 'heavy-light' mesons. The new meson, a combination of a strange quark and a charm antiquark, is the heaviest ever observed in this family, and it behaves in surprising ways -- it apparently breaks the rules on decaying into other particles. See the Fermilab Press Release."
Heavy-Light Mesons!
Who were those guys that faked the discovery of a heavy element?
----
"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
My bad, I sneezed into the particle accelerator. Sorry guys.
Many things will end up breaking the "rules" before it's all over.
That's kinda like a low-carb can of Jolt.
Now, I think this is the lifetime of the usual shorter-lived mesons, but still...
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
IANAP(hysicist) ... Do these mesons occur in nature? If not, how can it be claimed a new "discovery." In the same manner, I can glue a poptart to a can of coke and "discover" a new product that has the edible goodness of poptarts and the drinkable properties of coke.
I feel so dirty.
The best description of this phenomenon comes from James Ross in the official press release:
Stand clear of the doors. The doors are now closing.
...researchers at the famed Max Planck institute in Germany have found other seemingly contradictory particles such as:
the Government Assistance particle
the Military Intelligence particle
the Express Mail particle
and the ever-elusive Flat Breasted particle
The chief scientist of the oxymoron division was quoted as saying, "These particles make about as much sense as screen doors in submarines."
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
Actually, they do occur in nature. Specifically, they occur when a sufficiently energetic cosmic ray strikes our atmosphere.
This is the same reason that many physicists laugh off the idea that they're going to create a mini-black hole that would sink to the earth's core and destroy us all. The universe is constantly running even higher-energy experiments in our atmosphere all the time - we just haven't placed our detectors in the right place! (To be fair to our hard-working particle physicists, you would need a VERY large detector hovering high in the air if you wanted to catch these things in nature.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
First, let me state that I have the greatest respect for the scientists looking for the secrets of the cosmos, and I eat this shit up like crazy whenever I get the chance. I think it's the greatest stuff ever, and hope that every politician who voted against the Superconducting Supercollider burns in hell forever.
That said: can you imagine 500 years from now when teachers are in class, getting past Newton and saying "Oh, and then the 20th century when Einstein and Heisenburg had their theories. Remember how we talked about Gallileo dropping objects and measuring the speed? Well, those 20th century guys did that with quantum mechanics. Get this: they smashed subatomic particles together to figure out what they were made of! Here's a picture. Now, stop laughing - and Jimmy, I see your eyes glazed over, stop downloading porn through your bainjack and pay attention."
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
...it apparently breaks the rules...
Because it couldn't be that we've made a mistake. It was the naughty meson's fault.
-... ---
This the obvious answer. Grand parent's question is not stupid. Grand parent himself is stupid for asking that!
...it's a new discovery!
We certainly expected that there would be a strange-anticharm meson, but until it was observed, there was no way to tell it's mass (except in a very broad range of likely masses for members of the heavy-light mesons) and it's lifetime. Quantum chromodynamics, while in many respects a remarkably precise theory, still has to have the masses of the particles put into the equations. In a real Theory of Everything, we'd be able to calculate the mass of such a meson before we'd seen it.
These particles certainly exist in nature, but because their lifetime is so short, you'd have to be right where they were created to be able to see them before they decayed. Since our detector-on-the-surface-of-a-neutron-star project (affectionately called the DOTSOAN project) has had its funding denied again, the only place we can be observing right where they were created is right here on Earth in the accellerators.
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Stuff like this is utterly fascinating. It's another way to examine the universe and try to figure out how it works. Trying to figure out the strong force will help with figuring out nuclear properties. And since everything has nuclei....
Also, experiments like this might poke holes in the Standard Model, which could lead to new area to explore in High Energy physics. Who knows what nature has hidden at the fermi level?
And yes, I used to do particle physics, so this immediatly caught my attention.
Farnsworth: It's a single atom of jumbonium. And element so rare, the nucleus alone is worth more than $50,000.
Bender: How much more?
Farnsworth: $100,000.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
Look at what they had for lunch on 06/17:
Aztec Tortilla Soup
Hot Italian Sub $4.75
Chicken Picata $3.75
Thai Beef $3.75
Roast Beef Cheddar on Kaiser Roll $4.75
Beef Strombolis $2.85
Marinated or Cajun Chicken Caesar Salads $4.75
It's a wonder they got any work done that day...
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
If the data and rules disagree (and the data is valid) then "the rules" were never ever really correct. This is the most interesting and cognitively confounding element of science. So many experiments cause the perceived "rules" to change when in fact the true rules of the universe never change, only our approximations and estimations of them. This is why I wonder if so much of science is really just curve-fitting (F = m*a + delta, where delta contains relativistic effects, quantum effects, etc.) Similarly, I wonder if E = mc^2 + delta, where delta includes effects unseen because we haven't tested the formula over the entire span of possible conditions (energies, distances, mass concentrations, etc.)
As an aside, a friend in college was religious because of this very issue. He hated the fact that science couldn't "make up its mind" abut what was true or not -- for him, an erroneous certainty was more comfortable than a changing, but progressively more correct uncertainty.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Obviously any experiment that yields unexpected and reproducable results is great news for quantum theorists.
I'm wondering if the theoretical predictions presented in the article tip the scales toward or away from any of the various theories of quantum structure. In particular:
"SELEX also saw the new meson decay about six times more often than expected into an eta particle (a rarer but well-studied member of the meson family), rather than into the expected particle, called a K meson."
It seems obvious that this experiment highlights a failure in our understanding of the strong force.
It really is turtles all the way down.
Have you read my blog lately?
Unfortunately, your new poptart-coke creation, while tasty, isn't quite the same.
The SELEX experiment (which, incidentally ended in 1997 and this discovery resulted from a reanalysis of data) measures the results of protons colliding with solid targets of copper and diamond.
Of course, we all know what protons and other subatomic particles are(and they we are made up of them). But, we don't know what they are made up of. Enter the quarks, mesons, and gluons.
So, essentially they *do* exist in nature, but not in isolated form.
Scientists have finally discovered the black sheep in the nuclear family... ...sorry
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
"The distribution of the D0 K+ combined mass for all candidates in the data sample including Anti-particle combinations (D0bar K-). There are two clear peaks. The lower, at a mass of 2570 MeV/c2, is the known DsJ(2573) meson, discovered in 1994. This peak's width is more than the detector resolution showing the the "natural width (Gamma)" of this state due to its short lifetime. The value measured for the natural width of 14 MeV/c2 is consistent with previous measurements. The detector resolution is better by a factor of 2 in this D0 K+ decay mode than in the Ds+ eta0 mode making Selex more sensitive to the lifetimes of these state in this decay mode."
Shit man, I could of told you that.
nice troll....
thats just strange. but in a way, charming.
"SELEX deputy cospokesperson"
#!
I think this stuff DOES actually matter, I mean, physicists discovered quantum entanglement and now there's a the tantalizing possibility of the development unbreakable cyphers, quantum computers etc. Who knows what magical technology will come from these seemingly obscure discoveries. And I dare say that it doesn't take a physicist to come up with ways to harness these technologies, all it takes is a curious mind.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
"It's like watching a water bucket with a large hole and small hole in the bottom," Russ said. "For some reason, the water is pouring out the small hole six times faster than it's coming out of the large one. Something unusual must be going on inside the bucket."
If you follow that anology, the small hole may have a whirlpool giving it the speed advantage.
Kinda like spinning water in a 2L coke bottle and then turning it upside down. The water falls out much faster than the big hole doing the ol glub glub.
Its a displacement thing.
"Cap'n - I think if we reverse the heavy light mesons, we can interuupt the Klingon's charmed anti-quark field just long enuf to escape!"
Shatner: "Scotty, you only have 60 seconds, hurry!"
And, BTW, congrats to the Fermi team. I have plenty of friends employed there, I always like to see new discoveries. Good job, guys.
You sure that was describing the particle and not the Slashdot effect?
... quantum physics would start to get pretty boring after a while.
It's always fun to find a fault in the theory and then find a way to fix the theory, especially when that fix is elegant and makes all sorts of really cool predictions that you could not have made before.
Those fine folks who subscribe to my arXiv.org RSS feeds probably have already read the full paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0406045
My RSS feeds can be found at:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~cmhogan/arXivRDF/
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
"It's like watching a water bucket with a large hole and small hole in the bottom," Russ said. "For some reason, the water is pouring out the small hole six times faster than it's coming out of the large one. Something unusual must be going on inside the bucket."
This first observation of the new meson expands the picture of the ways in which the strong force works within the atomic nucleus... A meson is made up of a quark and an antiquark, bound together by the strong force."
So they admit that the force is strong with this one...
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Originally the quark names were up, down, strange charm, truth and beauty. Then they changed truth and beauty to top and bottom. This is confusing. Why is up and top both used? Is top more up than up, ie. the most up?
Part of the fun of physics is the cool names. Top and bottom are boring. Perhaps they're exciting to certain persons of a particular sort of alternative lifestyle, and more power to 'em, but physics should be flashy and cool, with its WINOs and WIMPs, not boring with top and bottom.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
... Wellcome our new subatomic, particle supercharged, dually quarked master
NO SIG
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's just Shannen Doherty you're thinking about. With the end result being the same - feeling dirty ;-)
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
"It's like watching a water bucket with a large hole and small hole in the bottom," Russ said. "For some reason, the water is pouring out the small hole six times faster than it's coming out of the large one. Something unusual must be going on inside the bucket."
Doesn't this attempted decryption of the universe break a provision in the DMCA? If that's not applicable, then I'm sure Microsoft will be getting a patent on it any day now.
It's strange, anti-charming, and overweight. Probably wears glasses and doesn't bathe regularly too. (ducking quickly :-)
Ian Ameline
There have been times where the best fitting equations were just like you say. They had parts that didn't correspond to any real understanding. They just made the equation work. Those are emperical results.
Much science is about taking those emperical results and coming up with theory that explains what they mean.
That's because the "rules" are bounded on our existing knowledge. Way back when the rules stated that if you sailed for too long, you'd fall off the edge of the (flat) earth, or that the sun orbited around the earth.
I'd expect that in the future, what we take for granted as a rule will be stretched, shrunk, or even broken. I'm not sure when it will be "over," but chances are that we'll be over before we learn all we could about the universe (possibly due to misunderstanding how it works).
>Look
You see a meson.
>Examine meson.
It's too small for you to see.
>Examine meson with microscope.
The meson appears to be composed of too smaller particles, a quark and an antiquark.
>Examine quark.
The quark is strange.
>Examine antiquark.
The pleasant blue glow leads you to conclude that this is a charmed antiquark.
>Rub antiquark.
Your fingers are too big and clumsy.
>Rub antiquark with cue-tip.
You suddenly feel lucky.
Two elf-nymphs enter the room. They look at you expectedly...
Obviously, the only reasonable explanation is that aliens are in the process of warming up their "bulldozer". If you check the documents on file at Alpha Centauri, you'll see that the earth is scheculed to be destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass quite soon. I recommend making friends with dolphins, and always carrying a towel with you. That way when the dolphins evacuate, you're properly equipped and can hopefully hitch a ride as thanks for all the fish.
The point I was trying to make is that it seems like the average person is always supposed to be blown away by articles like this, but how big is this discovery?
Let me clarify. I'm not saying that understanding the building blocks of our universe is not important. However, it seems everybody is automatically supposed to be awed by any discovery like this and they're all just as important as the next. Granted this is a press release, and its not really supposed to explain the whys and hows, but who read this release and new immediately knew exactly what the authors were trying to convey? I sure as hell didn't.
If they really want to express the importance of their work, include some resources about quarks, about mesons, their discovery, stuff like that. Things which are intangible like this need to be well explained to the everyday person.
I, myself, am charmed by strangeness.
> While the SELEX experiment stopped taking data in 1997,
> an extended analysis revealed this new particle lurking
> within their data.
Nice to see the costly technology paying off long after the experiment is over.
Pure science is worth the money.
As a taxpayer, I like to know that research will have practical benefits.
So, if the Fermilab folks could tell us whether this will lead to any or all of the following useful devices, I would greatly appreciate it:
1) Warp Drive
2) A way to make all the stars in the galaxy go supernova at once
3) Bring back all the socks that vanish in the dryer
4) Mr. Fusion
5) Flying Cars
Scientists are on a quest for truth, using solely that which we have actually observed (as compared to that which was written in a large book thousands of years ago) as their guide.
Ever consider that your interpretations of your observations are incorrect? We are human afterall. We do make mistakes. Don't believe everything you see.
And as for the large book written thousands of years ago, it was at least written by people who knew what they were talking about and witnessed various items that were then included in that large book. They were around when some of those events occurred and for the events they weren't around for they were told by a higher power what had transpired. I guess it's up to you to decide to believe a higher power that created the universe and then told others about it or to believe people who were never around during that time testify as to how things came into being and want us to believe they know what what they are talking about when they can only guess.
When a higher power creates something as complicated as the universe it might tip you off that just maybe it is too complicated for mere humans to comprehend and although we can reach a partial understanding we will never reach a full understanding because our minds are human and we think like humans...and have biases and agendas to fight for. We are already getting to a point where thinking about black holes and other related items is a realm only a few thousand people can comprehend and the math required is only for the elite. It may be only a matter of time before no level of human intelligence can unravel everything about the universe. But even then I know some scientists will still dismiss any higher power being involved in the Creation.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Yeah, so God did these amazing miraculous things thousands of years ago, then conveniently stopped. Where are the burning bushes today? Where are the cities being smote? Where are the heretics being turned into pillars of salt? Where are the booming voices of God from the heavens? Oh yeah, and don't forget... the Universe was created a few thousand years ago, too. Uh huh... RIGHT. Fucking idiot.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I recently met a young neuroscientist who used to be a physicist. He got his PhD working on string theory. I asked him why he left the field, and he told me it was because there wasn't much left to be discovered in physics. I hear this claim all the time, that things are more less "done" in physics. And yet, every couple of weeks or once a month or so, there is a discovery like this, that doesn't fit into the current model at all. Not to mention all of the problems with dark matter and such. So, what gives? Do we really have it all almost figured out, or will we still be saying this 200 years ago, after all the books have been rewritten 20 times? The more we think we know, the less we seem to know. Or, are discoveries like this no big deal, just little chinks in the armor?
I dislike their frequent use of the word. It seems to imply that this field is somehow solid in it's knowledge of how these particles work, when in reality it's really alot of clever guesswork. It would seem to me that what they mean by contradiction is merely a seeming contradiction because our assumptions, obviously, have come into question. I know it'd be a pain to be so annoying accurate all the time but could quantum science, in general, please qualify this more often?
Be a little less quick to assume you're unraveling reason itself and start recognizing that if you have a contradiction, then it's because some premise of yours is wrong.
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
Finally! Meson blasters
Here's some advice for you: You're a fucking idiot. Don't talk ever. You clearly don't understand science. Science is interpreted but science is just about facts. Science is about what we observe happening. Our interpretations of that may be wrong but they are recognized as interpretations. Yet you say these observations of miracles are indisputable. It is clearly self serving to talk about such miracles and how people need to worship you so that god will like them. I have to stop writing now because you are such an idiot and I don't know how to point out rigorously how stupid you are. You are worthless. You are a waste of space. I hope you realize that.
..or maybe I don't, who knows?
Could this be ... Meson Ikkoku?
(Ikkoku = brevity, a short moment)
Very very right. I hate it when people say something of the sort like "well, it only happens in the lab, it doesn't count." "Yes, (insert phenomenon here) has been observed in a lab, but that is irrelevent. It happens."
That's right. All your base.
However, the laws of physics are only a very small subset of all possible statements that can be expressed within a formal system.
Try again. The laws of physics (which we haven't fully worked out yet, of course, but that's besides the point) completely describe your brain and it's function (the mind), including any thoughts about mathematics. Thus, the neural correlates of mathematical thought map any mathematics we can think of to the physical universe. Thus the issue of all of mathematics not being able to fit in this universe, along with the religion of mathematical platonism, are moot.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
- High-temperature superconductors
- Fusion
- Quantum gravity
- Dark matter
- Dark energy
- Gravity waves (specifically finding them)
- Quantum computing
Also how does one jump from physics to neuroscience? That seems to be a rather large leap (as in going back to school for another 5 years).>it apparently breaks the rules on decaying into other particles.
If they are using collisions to observe the new particle, then the energy in the collision is being turned in to new matter, which can decay into other particles...
I thought that was normal.
Even if it isn't the expected particle, it must just mean that there is a reaction there that just wasn't seen previously... I doubt it's reall a "new" particle, hah!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
The complexity of all these different particles will collapse into something much simpler when we look at it all from a different angle. Since I can't think of any other way to discover this "different angle", I am in favor of the physicists continuing with the current research methods -- finding more and more new and bizarre particles until it becomes obvious what we're actually looking at.
String theory, where all particles are just different vibration frequencies of otherwise identical loops of "string", is rather appealing. But it seems we can't quite wrap our math around it yet.
Of course the universe is under no obligation to be simple or elegant, but it just often seems to be the way -- a random complex thing becomes simple and obvious when viewed in the appropriate context.
Cheers.
As much as our understanding about the world through science is flawed, religion is flawed in many respects too. Nobody believes 100% of the things either claim anyway. ;)
"It's like watching a water bucket with a large hole and small hole in the bottom," Russ said. "For some reason, the water is pouring out the small hole six times faster than it's coming out of the large one. Something unusual must be going on inside the bucket."
i must say, i vote for the most comprehensive
KISS principle applied for the year 2004 so far!
The principle was discovered some years ago by Proffessor of Applied Weak Anagrammatics, Dr Bushlilt (and many other academics besides).
Some effects due to the Heineken uncertainty principle:
1- Key hole in front door spontaneously moves in unpredictable ways;
2- Road refuses to remain under car without regard to the laws of physical motion;
3- Ionization of airborne particles resulting in the smell of curbside hotdogs becoming appealing (substitute kebab/curry according to nationality)
4- Optical distortion causing unattractive features of members of the opposite sex to become invisible (apparently the part of the visible spectum associated with ugliness is pushed into the shorter wavelengths, the higher energies resulting in the increased incidence of colon cancer linked with alcohol consumption).
Actually, there are GAJILLIONS of people who DO believe 100% of what religion claims. Ever been to Oklahoma? (I have. I lived there for a while.)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
and this task takes three-four year of data analysis.
Seriously, the LEP had, becore closing, published preliminary hints of a charged scalar at 68 GeV and a neutral one at 115 Gev. After one or two years, the final analysis were done, lowering the certainty on such discovery. Then it took a year more to do the joint analysis from LEP four experimental areas, again lowering the relevance of these signals. Then Nature (the journal) publish a review article alerting that the 115 signal is there. All this without doing any new experiment.
Surely most important data can be read from other cheap sources, such as cosmic rays or nuclear data. But the devil is details, and detail is the thing you get from a particle accelerator.
Just picking nits... so far as I know quantum theory has not yet led to unbreakable ciphers. You are probably referring to quantum "encryption", which is a complete misnomer because no encryption at the quantum level is taking place. It should really be called "quantum key exchange", since that's what it does. Once the keys are exchanged standard mathematical symmetric ciphers or one time pads can be used, but these latter algorithms are classical.
Ehmmm... The whole thing is not really about whether he did or not but rather how he did it... At least that was the argument my clerical teachers used in boarding school (realy old style, conservative like, catholic. founded some 1230 years ago. *grin*)
This is good for nothing. Ignore it or send it to the Customer Care Dept.