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."
That's no muon, it's a space station!
I'll show myself out.
Chewons
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.
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.
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/
The Tevatron is big money science. the LHC is bigger money science.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Warning: the following is from memory, so details may be off. The gist of it is correct.
There's a section in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" where he goes to see the collider at the new school he's just arrived at. The collider at the school he came from is state of the art, so he's expecting something even better at the new school, because they have been producing many remarkable, cutting edge, results.
The collider he finds is small, and far from state of the art, and almost held together by duct tape and chewing gum. He realizes that this is why it has produced such remarkable results--the scientists that work with it are very hands on, getting down and dirty with the experiments, coaxing every last bit out of them. The scientists using the shiny new state of the art collider are sitting back in their offices, just getting disembodied data that they haven't really connected with, and don't understand on a gut level like their colleagues using the "inferior" equipment do.
Feynman knew then he was going to happy at the new school.
I work in electrical engineering, and unfortunately very few people play with scopes and irons anymore. "Hardware" engineering is mostly abstract concept juggling on computers these days.
I'm the guy with the 45 year old tube scope with Nixie tube digital readout and the two soldering irons...
the deliciously ironic particle
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Poor little guy gets a single centimeter in 20 picoseconds-time and poofs into nothingness
I can already see the spam... "P4rticl3 not going far enough? Last longer! Natur4l P4rticle eh4ncement!"
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
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.
> 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.
That's because it takes a lot of electricity to cool the collider down. Europeans like to use a lot of electricity to keep their buildings warm in winter, which drives up the price of electricity. So they wait for summer when electricity is cheaper and the giant German solar panel farms are pumping out lots of jiggawatts.
"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.
Interesting. I'd guess that the Tev and the SPS (which is now the LHC injector) are sort of the-same-money physics, in real terms, as the LHC. But I don't know. The SSC, which was going to reach higher energy than the LHC, got far too expensive, mostly because of gross mismanagement. Disclaimer: I've worked on all the mentioned machines, and the demise of SSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider hurt a lot.
Down with categorical imperatives
The real stuff has gotten pretty tough. I had the challenge once to rework a preproduction board to prove a design change. I was way out of my comfort zone.
Resistors these days are the size of a juvenile flea. If you drop one, let it go man... it's gone. ICs aren't much better. You have to use IPA and a lintfree cloth just to clean the soldering tweezers. It takes a 60x microscope and a steady hand. I was really regretting my caffeine habit. And the tiny static charges make everything sticky. The leadfree solder takes more heat so you have to be extra careful not so bake the components to death. And don't stab yourself with the tweezers. They look like pencil erasers in the scope but they'll penetrate your skin with no resistance, burning the whole way.
It worked. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. I am thrilled to have had the experience. I wish I knew a vendor for the surgical point soldering tweezers.
Respect to the asian ladies in the factory that do this all day for a pittance, with nothing more than a magnifying glass and grim determination.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They do for the most part. But almost inevitably somebody makes 200,000 circuit boards, only to discover that something doesn't work and it to be reworked. Three resistors, a capacitor and an IO connector have to be changed. It's boring work in a toxic environment under appalling conditions. But it's got to be done if you want that new BluRay player under your tree.
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.