Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Find Long-Sought Majorana Particle
New submitter boner writes "In a follow-up to an earlier Slashdot story, scientists at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands yesterday published their findings that they have indeed found the Majorana particle. The announcement on the university website provides both a summary of the academic paper (PDF) and background of this groundbreaking discovery. Quoting: 'Majorana fermions are very interesting – not only because their discovery opens up a new and uncharted chapter of fundamental physics; they may also play a role in cosmology. A proposed theory assumes that the mysterious ‘dark matter, which forms the greatest part of the universe, is composed of Majorana fermions. Furthermore, scientists view the particles as fundamental building blocks for the quantum computer.'"
When two of them meet, they annihilate. Note from the article that there are two of these things, and they are at opposite ends of the nanowire. Presumably when you turn off the power or cooling they get together and turn back into energy.
Dark matter is suspected to be the same - when two particles meet, they annihilate, potentially giving us a signal we can measure. They don't meet very often though, because dark matter barely interacts with anything, including itself.