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Tiny Particle With No Charge Discovered
ZonkerWilliam writes to mention PhysOrg is reporting that a tiny particle with no charge, called an 'axion' has been discovered. From the article: "The finding caps nearly three decades of research both by Piyare Jain, Ph.D., UB professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and lead investigator on the research, who works independently -- an anomaly in the field -- and by large groups of well-funded physicists who have, for three decades, unsuccessfully sought the recreation and detection of axions in the laboratory, using high-energy particle accelerators."
I assume that's 10^-13 seconds. Ten seconds to thirteen seconds would be a very long time as these things go.
This is a bad description. The wake of a bullet going through ballistics gel is due to the electromagnetic force. The axion, in contrast does not experience that force. Like the neutron, it must be discovered indirectly (though it is more difficult to discover than a neutron). A useful part of the article:
So basically, they discovered it by observing the electrically interacting positron and electron pair produced very close to the production with a specialized type of photographic film.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
In the context of subatomic particles, I think "neutron" is as large as they get.
Actually, now that you mention it, wouldn't a neutrino qualify?
This would be very important, if true. However, there's at least one thing that makes me wonder whether it's right:
Jain has used it throughout his career to successfully detect other exotic phenomena, such as the charm particle, the anomalon, the quark-gluon plasma and the nuclear collective flow.
I used to do low-energy nuclear physics research, and although this stuff is at higher energies, a lot of it sets off my B.S. detector. The information I've been able to find about the anomalon makes it sound like it's flaky. The statement in the article also makes it sound as if Jain discovered the other things on the list, but actually I think what it really means is that he participated in experiments, where his contribution was that he did the emulsion technique. From what I know about the continuing work on the quark-gluon plasma, it's not a specific, definite, yes/no thing that can really be considered to have been discovered, and I don't think emulsions have been particularly important in that work, either.
It's unfortunate that the paper isn't available on arxiv.org. However, IOP will let you read it if you set up an account. Well, I'm not a specialist in relativistic heavy ion physics, or emulsion techniques, but the paper doesn't look very convincing to me at all. In figure 4, they claim to see two peaks, one near 7 MeV, and one near 19 MeV. The statistics simply don't look convincing. All I see is a spectrum with some noise in it, where they've picked what look like two big statistical fluctuations and called them peaks. They claim it's significant at the 3-sigma level, which actually isn't a very high level of statistical confidence, especially for such an extraordinary claim.
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Uhm, no. The Big Bang is a theory, but people don't go around trying to create mini universes. Sure you could argue that they "test" it with observational data, but that's not really performing experiments either now is it?
And as a Mathematician, why are you limiting the concept of a "theory" to the land of science? You scientists are constantly being bound by the restrictions of the physical world around you!
Isn't it one of the basic rules of grammar that if you are asking a question, you use a question mark?
Saying that the wake is due to electromagnetic force is like saying that car-crash whiplash is due to seatbelts or bumpers.
The wake is due to the transfer of kinetic energy from the bullet (okay, the bullet as measured from the frame of the gel) to the gel (in it's frame). Electromagnetics is just the medium of this transfer.
A bullet sitting motionless in gel creates no wake... but the electromagnetic force is still there.
Clearly, the wake is not "due" to the electromagnetic force, it is a "product" of said force (and the kinetic energy of the speeding bullet).
I applaud your mischievous wordplay, and I await the potential wrath of your advanced physics knowledge.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Testable doesn't mean you can recreate it- it means it makes some predictions about how the world is now that can be tested. Big bang predicts levels of background radiation and other things that can be tested for.
String theory doesn't predict anything. Its not testable. Its not science. Its caused some interesting advances in math to solve certain aspects of it, but thats about it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Wow, you must be fun at parties calling everyone stupid for disagreeing with you. My mention of the electromagnetic force is critical in this discussion because there is no evidence that the axion is composed of charged particles that when superimposed produce a zero net charge. If it had then those particles it could be detected electromagnetically (i.e. even the neutral neutron will bounce off of certain particles due to electromagnetic interactions--though I should note that strong nuclear interactions are also significant for a neutron). And without the electromagnetic force there will not be a wake through a ballistics jell which is the original issue that I pointed out.
I don't really care that it bothers you that I have simplified this to the simplest case (but as Einstein would suggest "no simpler"). Sure you can describe the perturbation of a ballistics jell with forces that are composed of special cases of the electromagnetic force but the fundamental point is that without the ability to interact electromagnetically at the lowest level all of those forces result to zero.
If an axion has a zero fundamental charge you can talk about impulses all night long but they still do not mean a damn thing. When you discuss subatomic particles you cannot use the special cases of the forces that we have come to love (because they make our lives simple). Spring constants have no meaning. Pressure has no meaning. Even things like angular momentum take on bizzare new forms that cannot use the classical theories.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.