Slashdot Mirror
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."
What do you think they make Peeps out of?!
That's no muon, it's a space station!
I'll show myself out.
Chewons
I just find it odd that with the introduction of a new collider this one has finally found something.
CowboyTacoQuark?
There's two sides to every schwartz, this must be one of them.
The hypothetical particle even seems to have the right mass to account for one theory of dark matter."
Not to ask the blatantly obvious, but if it's the right mass for one theory of dark matter, I can't help but wonder where they are all being produced. Given a life of 20 picoseconds, I can't imagine that there would be monstrous factories of these things all over the universe to account for the stupidly large amount of mass they are supposed to account for. How come we haven't found them before?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I wish it was the god particle, rendering the whole point of building the LHC an epic fail. It would just be deliciously ironic.
When asked about the new particle during the first test, one of the instruments that was monitoring it malfunctioned. One of the resident scientists were quoted as saying:
"Overhead capacitors to one oh five percent. Uh, it's
probably not a problem, probably, but I'm showing a small discrepancy
in... well, no, it's well within acceptable bounds again. Sustaining
sequence."
Someone to replicate their results.
Oops!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
i, for one, welcome our "long-lived particle" overlords
The New Scientist article points to a paper at arxiv:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.5357
with the rather less sensational title:
Study of multi-muon events produced in p-pbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV
I'm amused to note that the author list stretches over three pages, which I gather is common for this sort of paper.
The question here is about repeatability, and given how long it's taken to have an anomaly like this surface, the only other accelerator that might be capable of confirming this find (ie, doing it again) is probably the LHC.
Anyone know what the probability of doing this again might be?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Doctor " Congratulations professor!! you have a new bouncing baby particle"
Professor "look at those electrons, its hung like a horse"
Doctor "eer, sorry to disappoint your sir but that is just residual background noise"
John Conway talks about this over at Cosmic Variance: http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/11/02/cdf-ghost-muons/
This would have outlawed most legitimate hunting shotguns (greater than 5 shell capacity). Obama was also for SB2165. One really has to wonder about him when he says he supports individual gun ownership, yet backed down when faced with an opportunity to support law-abiding gun owners. Why would he not want to allow you to use a hand gun to defend yourself against a burglar in your own home?
those democrats had that old woman killed to get obama the sympathy vote. it shows there is no end to what the democrats will do to get their latest bitch into office.
And these guys know enough to assure us that nothing can go wrong at the LHC. Weren't a lot of physics guys hired by Wall St. to run models a few years ago?
Poor little guy gets a single centimeter in 20 picoseconds-time and poofs into nothingness but I'll give it an A for effort. I hope this does ultimately afford us a new awareness into how things work down the road; preferably in my lifetime. (Read: Something absolutely astounding).
... because a publication is not about excitement or popularity, but about solid results and conclusions.
For excitement and popularity one publishes in Nature or Scientific American.
I conjecture that it's the same old physics, and that we only understand it a bit better.
the deliciously ironic particle
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The picosecond particle is a hypothetical force carrier type particle that the dark mater would interact with.
And the best evidence for the Higgs? CDF and d0 found exactly what they were built for, and probably a lot more.
I am an anonymous coward
> The hypothetical particle even seems to have the right mass to account for one theory of dark matter.
That may say more about the number of theories of dark matter than about this particle.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
subatomic particle.. its a Black Hoooo *FLASH*
"Particle May Have Been Found "
It is really good - and amazing - that they found this particle. I've lost sub-atomic particles before, and the things are just so incredibly small that it is unbelievably difficult to find them again. The resulting migraine from eye-strain can be terrible.
Better known as 318230.
"The LHC is out of commission,
This is news to me. Define "out of commission" and give me a link to backup claims.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
does it run on linux?
"The hypothetical particle even seems to have the right mass to account for one theory of dark matter."
An excellent bet is that any new particle will rapidly give rise to dozens if not hundreds of theories as to why it is exactly what's needed to explain dark matter.
(In other words, instant physics is frequently not very trustworthy, and instant theoretical physics is especially frequently not very trustworthy.
Okay, maybe not 1.21, but it was still a Doc Brown moment for me...
Not only will we discover more particles with the LHC, we will create a greater understanding of the world in which we live. This will inevitably lead to the result the common man understands: cool new products! These products will of course be expensive at first and cost less over time, ultimately driving up the standard of living for all but the most exploited among us.
Research always pays. Sometimes embarrassingly much. That's why, although I would like NASA's budget to be increased to a few hundred billion dollars a year, I can live with the pittance they're given. Eventually somebody with a profit motive will explore space, succeed, and reap returns beyond the dreams of Midas.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
an unknown particle with a lifetime of about 20 picoseconds was produced in the collision, traveled about 1 centimeter
That is 16000 times faster than light..!
There are several mysterious particles that aren't easily identified by the Standard Model. One in particular is the X(3872) particle, which was discovered by Japanese scientists and confirmed by other laboratories. It might be a tetraquark particle or even a meson molecule, but scientists are just guessing for now.
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2008/04/13/the-charming-case-of-x3872/
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
1. How much has the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere gone up since the industrial revolution? How much has the temperature gone up?
CO2: Around 40%
Temperature: Around 1 degree Celcius
2. When and why were Europe and North America deforested? Why does it matter?
Europe experienced a lot of deforestation at the hands of mankind between 1100 to 1500 AD. There wasn't much after that until recent years, when it has again become a serious problem.
America experienced little deforestation until the arrival of European settlers, and there has been extensive deforestation since then, mostly over the last two centuries.
As for why it matters: Forests are a good CO2 sink. Losing them at the same time as releasing unprecedented quantities of CO2 in to the atmosphere will lead to a situation we have not had before and therefore can only make educated guesses as to what will happen.
3. What bad effects of the temperature rise have been observed since the industrial revolution? How sure are you that the bad effects are attributable to global warming?
If I may, I won't just concentrate on what the temperature rise has done, but instead the overall effects of temperature, increased CO2 and so on. It's not fair to look at only one part of the story...
Possible (debatable) effects: More flooding, tornadoes and extreme weather than we had before.
More definite effects: More swans in Siberia, colural foliage fading, severe damage to coral reefs, ocean acidification and more...
4. How much are you predicting that the carbon dioxide levels will rise?
I'm not predicting anything... It's probably safe to say "between not much and quite a lot". Please go look at some research yourself for estimates.
5. How much are you predicting that the temperatures will rise?
I'm not predicting anything... It's probably safe to say "between not much and quite a lot". Please go look at some research yourself for estimates.
6. What bad effects are you predicting due to increased temperature?
Similar to the effects we're experiencing today (see above), only worse relative to the amount of climate change inducing factors involved (including, but not limited to, CO2, temperature rises (from any source) and so on).
7. Isn't it true that without the greenhouse effect, the earth would be a frozen ball of ice and life would be very difficult on the planet?
Yes, that is true, which is why no-one is suggesting we strip the atmosphere off the planet - things would be rather unpleasant.
This is a very silly question though, because you know full well that it's not a binary situation "we have a greenhouse effect"/"we don't have a greenhouse effect". What matters is how MUCH of a greenhouse effect we have. Too little or too much are both bad situations.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
I think I speak for a great many PWDRUHTSW (People who don't really understand how this shit works) when I say, "WTF SCIENTISTS! WHERE'S OUR MOTHER FUCKING BOSON!".
An update on the status of the collider would be appreciated too, thank you.
Considering that most comments are modded as "Funny", I wonder why serious articles like this get posted on Slashdot.
the boogeron. I found one in my nose this morning.
That's pretty fast.
Granted, there are a lot of zero's so my calculations may be off, but:
1 Centimeter = 0.01 Meters
20 Picoseconds = 0.00000000002 Seconds
Thus the speed was:
0.01 / 0.00000000002 = 500,000,000 m/s
The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s
Did I miss something or are we exceeding the speedlimit here?
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
The article is correct. A picosecond is 10-12s or a millionth of a microsecond. Light does 300m in a microsecond so 0.3mm in a picosecond.
1. Actually, here's something worth thinking about:
The whole global warming is about 1K or 1 degree Celsius in a century. Taking the average Earth temperature as about 300K (no need to go into more than 1 figure accuracy for a back-of-the-envelope calculation), the whole increase is about 0.3% of the absolute temperature.
Now I know that it means more than 0.3% for us, since we have a skewed scale in which we survive, so hold yer horses. I'm not trying to make it sound small, I'm just working in SI units, to try to figure out what could influence it and by how much.
Let's assume it was all due to external radiation. Not postulating that that _is_ the case, just doing a "what if" scenario. You can plug in your own factor afterwards.
Steffan Boltzmann says that radiated energy is proportional with absolute temperature to the 4th power. Equilibrium is reached when radiated energy equals incoming energy. So basically we'll stabilize at a higher temperature if the incoming energy increased, so we radiate as much right back. An increase of 0.3% in temperature, all else being equal, means an increase of about 1.2% in radiated energy. An increase in incoming energy by about 1.2% would completely offset it and explain it.
The sun however obeys the same law, and we get the same percentage of its radiated energy. You know, since the Earth's size and orbit didn't change. So even that converting to energy back and forth wasn't really needed, we just need (Tsun_now/Tsun_0)^4=(Tearth_now/Tearth_0)^4. Long story short, it only would have needed to increase its temperature by 0.3% too in the last century.
Now I don't think that the Sun is actually the cause of all that. NASA did measure a steady increase in Sun's temperature, but it's a bit slower than we'd need to give it the full blame. But just trying to make a different point there:
Yes, any changes in sun temperature are reflected in changes of Earth's temperatures. And, yes, very small influences on the Sun (0.3% isn't all that huge, after all) can affect Earth very significantly.
2. Also, we're not necessarily talking about energy it receives as such, but if some particles affect how fast it fuses hydrogen, the effects on the sun would be much larger than the effects on Earth. Since we don't fuse hydrogen down here.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Somebody has just discovered a tachion! The supremacy of causality falls!!!
And, yes, the parent's calculation is right. I didn't RTFA, so I don't know where is the error.
Rethinking email
Just how often do particles go "through the side of the beam pipe"? That sounds ... bad.
stuff |
Bits of those poor time travelers left stranded after the LHC broke.
1cm = .01 meter / 20 x 10^-12 seconds = 500,000,000 m/s.
How fast is c again? 300,000,000 m/s.
So this particle went 1.6c. So now that we've broken the speed of light when are we traveling to the stars?
I didn't read the article; is this a bug in the summary or in the article?
Actually, according to NASA, the Sun's total output has been increasing by about 0.05% per decade.
Quote from that link: "If a trend, comparable to the one found in this study, persisted throughout the 20th century, it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years."
Now again, I'm not saying that it covers the _whole_ global warming effect, but about 0.5 of that 1.2 increase is covered right there. It's almost half.
The moral of the story: yes, the Sun has been there for billions of years, but that doesn't mean it's been unchanged and perfectly constant output.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Chewans are mined near here. The province is named after them.
"feeling" what a capacitor does is very dangerous.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs