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Fermilab Not Dead Yet, Discovers Rare Single Top Quark

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the emphasis-on-the-operating dept.

Several sources are reporting that in spite of LHC hype, Fermilab's Tevatron has produced another feat for scientific discovery. Currently the world's most powerful operating particle accelerator, the Tevatron has allowed researchers to observe a rare single Top Quark. "Previously, top quarks had only been observed when produced by the strong nuclear force. That interaction leads to the production of pairs of top quarks. The production of single top quarks, which involves the weak nuclear force and is harder to identify experimentally, has now been observed, almost 14 years to the day of the top quark discovery in 1995."

9 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. And by Mozk · · Score: 5, Funny

    This quark was not charmed by being photographed.

    --
    No existe.
    1. Re:And by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Should I mod this "up" or "down" ?

    2. Re:And by CaptainPatent · · Score: 5, Funny

      Should I mod this "up" or "down" ?

      If we measure, won't that change the outcome?

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      Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
    3. Re:And by staryc · · Score: 5, Funny

      Should I mod this "up" or "down" ?

      If we measure, won't that change the outcome?

      We should let it simultaneously exist as funny and not exist as funny.

      --
      The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - Nietzche
    4. Re:And by CaptainPatent · · Score: 5, Funny

      We should let it simultaneously exist as funny and not exist as funny.

      Well that certainly puts a spin on things.

      --
      Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
    5. Re:And by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's going to be hard to top that one. And... uh... my bottom hurts.

      (that last one was a stretch I know)

    6. Re:And by FiniteSum · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The minute you try to make scientific research into a commodity like this, you will kill all scientific research. Do you think 19th century physicists had iPhones in mind when they were creating rudimentary batteries and experimenting with electromagnetism? Do you think Maxwell only published his famous paper so he could enable the creation of hybrid cars? Could anyone have predicted digital computers? Hell, could the inventors of digital computers have predicted modern desktops?

    7. Re:And by HeadlessNotAHorseman · · Score: 5, Funny

      >>High energy physics has a rich history of spinoff technologies. Ever had an MRI?
      >>The superconducting magnets used in an MRI machine come out of particle accelerators.

      I can't count the number of times people have stolen the super-conducting magnets from my particle accelerator to make MRI machines. Right now I'm stuck with a backlog of stationary particles in a jar in my back shed. I tried accelerating them by putting them in the passenger seat and driving down the road really fast, but it just wasn't the same :-(

      --
      I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
  2. Re:Bare/Single quark? by parrillada · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are saying that the top quark is being produced one at a time, rather than in pairs (IAAP). It's actually subtle -- what had been observed before were 2 top quarks emerging from a gluon. Now they have observed one top quark (and another quark) emerging from a W-boson. Basically. This is not a major discovery, but it is another important showing off of the 'standard model' working very well at the energies we have so far probed.

    Oh, and about isolating quarks. You cannot isolate a quark outside a hadron, but you can 'detect' the quark by observing the hadrons and leptons that it decays into, since they leave a distinct signature. The top quark is special because it decays before it even forms a hadron with other quarks.