New Type of Particle May Have Been Found

An anonymous reader writes "The LHC is out of commission, but the Tevatron collider at Fermilab is still chugging along, and may have just discovered a new type of particle that would signal new physics. New Scientist reports that the Tevatron's CDF detector has found muons that seem to have been created outside of the beam pipe that confines the protons and anti-protons being smashed together. The standard model can't explain the muons, and some speculate that 'an unknown particle with a lifetime of about 20 picoseconds was produced in the collision, traveled about 1 centimeter, through the side of the beam pipe, and then decayed into muons.' The hypothetical particle even seems to have the right mass to account for one theory of dark matter."

Comments

Re:One theory of dark matter eh?

[zappepcs]

An absolutely good question. I've been wondering about the effect of radiation from GRBs, blackholes, and other radiation sources in the Universe for a while now. That radiation must have an effect other than raising the ambient temperature a little bit. Even if the radiation is not enough to fry all life on this planet, it's possible that radiation may have an effect on the Sun's activity... which in turn directly affects our climate.

I do understand that the collider is a bit different than our Sun, but does anyone know what effect gamma ray bursts have on the efficacy or activity of our Sun?

With all the hubbub about global warming, I've been getting more interested in what affect our planet's climate. Recently we have found/discovered a few things that might have some effect. While it seems a small thing at best, what is not known is the effect of combined events (or lack of) from outside our solar system on how our Sun behaves.

Note: I am not convinced that man has not contributed to climate change. I simply am not convinced that we truly understand how and what controls our climate. I'd like to know all the factors that have nothing to do with mankind's interference. Until we do, there is no method to fully describe the climate model, nor predict any change to it.

Re:One theory of dark matter eh?

[Shark]

The first thing to realise, regardless of which side of the debate you are, is that there is a lot more politics than science being done on climate change.

I believe this is why the acceptable term has now become 'climate change' rather than 'global warming'.

I'm pretty certain that we do influence the climate. But Parent has a very good point that argument without all the facts is still nothing more than rhetoric.

There are plenty of theories on either side of that debate, but way too much political pressure (agenda?) to even allow for any form of educated and intelligent debate.

Whoever thinks this is Al Gore vs. Big Oil definitely hasn't looked into it deeply enough.

If you want to reduce CO2, *plant trees*. Elaborating a CO2 tax scam is merely a tool for social control.

Re:New Physics

[ThanatosMinor]

I conjecture that it's the same old physics, and that we only understand it a bit better.

Physics is not Truth, nor is it nature or reality. It is an attempt at a scientific model of nature. When we only had Newtonian mechanics, General relativity was new physics. New models, new math, new science, same reality.

Re:One theory of dark matter eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Parent has a very good point that argument without all the facts is still nothing more than rhetoric.

With respect, thats not necessarily a very good point at all.

The OP, for example, illustrates that we don't have all the facts regarding particle physics.

The application of your "very good point" to this would result in our concluding that anything involving particle physics is "nothing more than rhetoric".

Taking a slightly broader view, one can conclude that either all scientific fields are "nothing more than rhetoric", or that one can in fact, draw meaningful conclusions in the absence of all of the facts.

I would humbly submit that evidence overwhelmingly supports the latter position.

It may be true to say that in the abesence of sufficient facts, one has nothing but rhetoric, or that the confidence we can have in and the accuracy of conclusions is proportional to the completeness of the facts on which they are based...but thats an entirely different position to the one you took.

The question, regarding climate change (and, perhaps more importantly, the anthropogenic aspects thereof) is not whether we have all facts or not, but rather whehter or not we have sufficient facts from which to draw meaningful conclusions.