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"Cascade B" Particle Discovered At Fermilab
pnotequalsnp writes to note that physicists at Fermilab have discovered a new heavy particle called the Cascade B. This is the first particle ever seen that is made up of quarks representing all three quark families. A team of 610 physicists from 88 institutions reported the discovery in a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters last week. This must be the discovery that triggered rumors that the Higgs had been found.
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with a mass of 5.774±0.019 GeV/c2, approximately six times the proton mass. The newly discovered electrically charged b baryon, also known as the "cascade b," is made of a down, a strange and a bottom quark. It is the first observed baryon formed of quarks from all three families of matter. judging by its componants, it should have a (-1/3*3=-1) charge of -1. strange quark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_quark Bottom quark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_quark Down quark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_quark
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Who was it who said, "People always 'discover' Higgs particles when funding is low."
Table-ized A.I.
ought to be enough for anybody.
I'm happy with the Physidore 64.
Table-ized A.I.
"I don't understand a word you just said."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The most annoying thing is they won't tell us who the 610 physicists are!
How we know is more important than what we know.
6 - Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity
111 - Treat people in your debt like family... exploit them.
I read the article, and got the gist of what they have found, but what does it mean? Why is is important? Is there any practical upshot of the discovery?
I still think the moon is made of cheese and that everything I see is composed of red, green and blue
In the test chamber!
Cue the AYB jokes...
The article describes a new particle with a mass a bit over 5 GeV. This is interesting, but is very different from the supposed resonance at ~180 GeV appearing in the rumors from the Tevatron. It seems pretty unlikely these are related. We'll still have to wait and hear from Dzero on the original rumors (probably just an analysis issue).
610 is not a "team", it's a "sign here to get your name on a paper" gaggle.
physicists at Fermilab have discovered a new heavy particle called the Cascade B.
Splendid! Now all I have to do is feed this into our generators, reverse the polarity of our schields, and our enemies are history. Muahahahah!
The most annoying thing is they won't tell us who the 610 physicists are!
Well, I'm pretty sure at least one is named "Robert", if that helps.
Table-ized A.I.
In 20 years when labsize is measured in Giga-physicists, this quote will come back to haunt you.
Not really. They're just trying to use these 238 physicists against us. If they told us who they are, the community could address them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Wow, now if only we can get 610 climatologists to believe in this particle, its existence will be confirmed.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
and that's it. Fermilab has nothing scheduled past then, and will have passed the torch to the LHC. I admit it, I am biased, having worked at Fermilab, but I find this to be tragic. Nowhere else have I had the opportunity to work with such an incredible group of people. Closing Fermilab will be an incredible loss to this country. I can only hope that the International Linear Collider will be built, and will be built at Fermilab. Time will tell.
Congratulations to the folks at DZero on yet another fine piece of work!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I'm happy with the Physidore 64.
Physicists often have many quarks abouts them.
tag for the first list item.
(\(\
(=_=) Bani!
(")")
"It's turtles... all the way down."
Seriously though, they managed to get the author information to fit on three pages. Here's the preprint. Usually it's bad when your paper has 10 times as many authors as references, but in this case I guess one can make an exception.
Oops... for suitably large values of 10, that is. Namely 61.
From what I understand, Cascade B was discovered when a beam of high energy particles was directed at a plate with dried spaghetti crusted on it. The scientists found that the Cascade B removed the dried on food and left no water spots. Further research is needed to determine if Cascade B can be adapted for use in existing dishwashers.
Unknown host pong.
Some other places attribute the quote to "Geoff Nicholson, Former VP, 3M Company".
It's too late at night for me to delve further though, and I got an essay to write.
~= scwizard =~
No, just 6. But the quarks do get bigger with each generation!
sigfault. core dumped.
This is completely unrelated to the search for the Higgs boson. While the Higgs is believed to be the elementary particle responsible for giving mass to all other particles, the Xi_b mentioned here is a composite particle consisting of three previously known quarks. So while it is good to know that the particle really exists as predicted by the standard model, this is definitely not the Nobel prize physics the discovery of the Higgs would be.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
...
5) Higgs Profit!
I am pretty sure the scientists at Black Mesa were discussing a danger of "resonance cascade" just before the tests with teir anomalous materials caused the dimensional outbreak... So we better leave this Cascade B stuff alone. The Freeman recovered us from the Cascade A, but we might not be so lucky this time. And what exactly caused the alternative future events in City 17?
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
I read that as "labia size". Certainly won't be many physicists needing to measure that.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
We have here an article about physics that uses the word cascade. They better have Gordon Freeman on this team, I'm betting none of the other scientists can swing a crowbar worth a damn.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Physicists of the DZero experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a new heavy particle, the b (pronounced "zigh sub b") baryon..
So now instead of
*sigh* goes back to watching pr0n
we will get
*zigh* goes back to watching pr0n
Any other ramifications other than standard model verification?
this is the first step for the Q bomb.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I hate to interrupt your conversation with yourself, but could you get to the point, please?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
You mean, like in "the larger the number of soldiers, the more pathetic an army is"? Don't be naive; not a single scientist, even if he is qualified in absolutely everything known to man, will be able to design something as complex as the LHC during his lifetime if he's working alone. Many specialists, probably diverse, will be needed to manage that tremendous amount of job in acceptable terms.
- Suppose you have an alternative process with a signature similar to the one you're seeking within your precision limit. You calculate the probabilities of both and decided that the second one is X orders of magnitude less probable.
-
And now compare it with the probability of a process normally not within the scope you seek, but which is close enough and besides is pretty probable to happen. Now, calculate the probability of it producing a signature close to the one you seek, and see how many times less probable it is than your primary channel of reaction.
You must admit that while the nature of these noises is different, the end result is comparable both by its effect and by its probability. Disclaimer: the above is purely theoretical and can be applied to any experiment, rather than being my analysis of this particular one.Reading the three last posts of yours, I get a strong feeling that you're in bad mood today or have little idea about modern physics in general.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
One way to build a solid team is to get complete involvement from the bottom to the top. If, at the end of the day, all the personnel who worked on the project get to put their names on the paper it shows how their work is valued and how much they are 'part of the team'.
And as for team size being limited - I'll bet that during the better days at NASA, say during the Apollo missions, everyone right down to the janitor felt that they were part of the team - and, if you don't think that janitors are important just wait until the next time the toilet blocks.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Obviously, the long sought after Cascade Bitter particle. I guess physicists must be pretty desperate to find a good beer these days. Though shelling out for a particle accelerator just so you can get some beer money seems pretty inefficient.
Bitter and proud of it.
So! That's how many physicists it takes to make a "cascade b". I didn't think I was going to ever know the answer to that riddle.
Of all the things I've lost. I miss my keys the most.
Well, the problem is in defining what is "background". When you calculate the probability you have a model of what background should be. When in "modern physics" (of which "I have no idea in general") they use the term background, it is usually implied "experimental" measurable background, not some "model" of background.
Can I make a request? Could you please NOT assume about my personality or mood in any way and stick to the content of what I am saying? Thank you.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This particle is not related to the rumored detection of the Higgs. It is 30 times lighter than the unexplained resonance that is at the basis of these rumors.
I think you do not undestand what I am alluding to. If you develop a method, a technology, device, etc. that is applicable to wide range of scientific experimentation, that does not mean you automatically become a coauthor of any paper that uses this technology. LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is designed to perform all kind of elementary particle experiments, not only the subject of the current paper. So you comment about LHC is off the target here.
Even if we consider people who worked specifically on this project: many of them did pure technical work (comparable to the job of translator). The same situation in genomic papers: people applied technology and get included in the paper for pure technical work. People should get authorship only when they applied their creativity and contribute to the paper something that have never been contributed before. Applying PCR to a new gene is NOT a scientific contribution and deserves to be mentioned only in acknowledgement.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Here, , funny guy.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Not quality, but the way the scientific credit is given.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I fail to track why the widely accepted practice of crediting staff who made non-critical but important contributions indicates pathetic state of modern science.
I used a wrong adjective. It is pathetic but for different reasons. The word I should use here is "obscene", "shameful" (or "shameless" which is the same in this case).
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
There is no "measurable background"; experimental results rarely can tell signal from noise. You just have a ton of homogenous data [for each channel], and have to develop a model or pick an existing one to explain it. The model allows you to say "this is what we seek, and this is something we're not interested in".
The assumption that you can declare the data measured while the beam was off to be equal to the background noise of your experiment is incorrect. The beam may generate a lot of different stuff, besides the specific particle that you are looking for, all of which should be considered noise.
Don't forget Higgy Baby (as TC called him) from "Magnum, P.I.".
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I don't know, have you seen End of Evangelion?
Why? Were there lips of indeterminate size?
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Wesley, re-calibrate the labia wavefront generator...
I drank what? -- Socrates
I'd bet you're wrong... 610 is way too many folks for a "meaningful" team. I agree with the parent, it was a "sign your name here" team. But then again, definitions mean everything and our definitions of a team might be different.
So does Heim's theory predict the existence and mass of this particle with the same accuracy as the others in the Standard Model?
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
From TFA:
> Sifting through data from trillions of collisions...
and
> The odds of the observed signal being due to something other than the
> cascade b are estimated to be one in 30 million.
There are over 66,000 one in 30 million events in "trillions" of collisions, which means at least 2 trillion.
I presume they mean one in 30 million, after taking into account "trillions".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Apparently nobody notice that the particle discovered at Fermilab is the BSD (as in Bottom Strange Down)
:)
(and yes, I know that you should not identify a baryon only by its quark content but...
And yes, it does take that many people to make this kind of discovery. Which is why I, and many others, are not interested in working in HEP long term. Come on, I read slashdot, obviously I don't like people.
It's very obvious. One or two scientists made the particle but the chief physicist dropped it on the floor shortly afterwards. You know how messy labs get - there was no way they could find it on their own.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Surely you're joking, Mr. Freeman!
A fraction of a second after this paper was published, it split into an administrative form called a WC329 and a smaller, 108-author paper entitled "Reconstructing evidence of the strange-b-baryon". The WC329 then split into a pair of grant proposals, cousins of ordinary funding requests. "Reconstructing evidence of the strange-b-baryon" then emitted a Ph.D. thesis and became a 23-author paper which was nearly published before it decayed into another Ph.D thesis and an ordinary 4-author paper.
Researchers at arxiv were able to reconstruct the form of the original paper by analyzing hundreds of thousands of "personal communicaion" and "in press" citations by physicists distributed around the field.
Well, although you could see Rei standing from orbit, most of the ground is obscured by clouds/LCL, but I'd estimate that the labia was a good mile or so...wait, am I really discussing the size of the genitalia on a fictional fourteen-year-old? >.>;
Depends which end.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'