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Mesons Flip Between Matter and Antimatter
steve writes "A team of over 700 physicists at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator have observed the B-sub-s meson oscillating between matter and antimatter states at 3 trillion times a second. From the Fermilab press release: 'Immediately after the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago, equal amounts of matter and antimatter formed. Much of it quickly acted to annihilate the other, but for little-understood reasons, a bit more matter than antimatter survived, providing the universe with the planets, stars and galaxies visible today.' The Standard Model predicted the oscillation, and Fermilab has been working for 19 years to confirm it. The announcement is good press for Fermilab, which is pushing Congress to build a new 18-mile-long International Linear Collider."
Almost all practical research derives in some way from "blue sky physics".
No, we can't immediately predict what will come out of this. But then, when electron spin was first discovered I'd imagine people were saying similar things- and only recently have there been reports that electron spin has been harnassed for storage/computation, which means it will finally come into the realm of practicality.
Not everything needs to have an immediate, obvious payoff to be worthwhile.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
Science shouldn't be an intra-nation dick measuring competition, it should be about advancing knowledge. I personally don't care where these things get built so long as they get built.