Slashdot Mirror
Quarks Know Their Left From Their Right
sciencehabit writes "How an electron interacts with other matter depends on which way it's spinning as it zips along—to the right like a football thrown by a right-handed quarterback or the left like a pigskin thrown by a lefty. Now, physicists have confirmed that quarks—the particles that join in trios to form the protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei—exhibit the same asymmetry. The result could give physics a new weapon in the grand hunt for new particles and forces. Or they can search for subtle hints of exotic new things beyond their tried-and-true standard model by studying familiar particles in great detail. In the latter approach, the new experiment gives physicists a way to probe for certain kinds of new forces."
Fuck Beta
Back to the article... Parity violation has been known in quarks for many many years - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... (hint: CP violation means charge-parity violation, which is a special case of Parity violation)
and we want UTF-8 + MATHJAX support - the math rendering engine that is used by http://math.stackexchange.com/
MATHJAX !! + UTF-8 !!
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Does anybody remember how Slashdot never used to delete posts? Then they were forced into it by the Scientology thing. Well, that has changed.
Stories submitted to the Slashdot firehose that take a negative view on the site's redesign are being deleted. 4 hours ago, it was full of anti-beta posts. Now they are gone. That's right. A forum that usually leaves V14GRA spam in place for posterity is deleting user content.
Then there is this comment. It was the first post on the Beta discussion thread. As such, most of the best comments are attached to it. Then, in five minutes, it went from +5 to -1 flamebait and, get this, was reordered to the bottom of the thread!
Dice PR is now a valid reason for Slashdot to delete user content. Awesome!
to the right like a football thrown by a right-handed quarterback or the left like a pigskin thrown by a lefty.
Oh, thanks, I was having such trouble working out what you meant by "left" and "right." And thanks for confusing some of your non-American readers with your references to footballs that you throw (what's that about?), and then referring to them almost immediately afterwards as "pigskins" instead.
Of course it's a terrible analogy anyway, since particle spin is only loosely analogous to every-day spin.
If it was that kind of spin, wouldn't "clockwise" and "anti-clockwise" be better words for it anyway? "Left" and "right" need a decision on which point you're looking at as well as direction.
Does it all come from electrons spiralling left or right in the old particle accelerators?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Interesting how 90& of all FB-haters are ACs ...
That is probably associated with the fact that 25% of them are forced to use it:
Right now, we're directing 25 percent of non-logged-in users to the beta; it's a significant number, but it's the best way for us to test drive this new design.
Given how obviously horrible the beta design is, this sentiment on the best way to test drive it is quite galling. OTOH, I am thankful they are not responsible for design airplanes or automobiles:
Yes, for the first test-flight we have filled 25% of the new plane with unsuspecting passengers but this is the best way for us to test drive our new design.
It has occured to me that maybe they trying to alienate the slashdot community
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
An American football isn't egg shaped, so it won't be handegg. The correct term would be hand prolate spheroid.
HTH, HAND.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I also have no idea how football will rotate when it is thrown by an right-handed quarterback .... footballs are meant to be kicked, hence the name. I have no idea how the addition of a quarterback will make me understand "rotates to the right" better.
Clockwise and counterclockwise are just like right and left, relative to your point of view. Perhaps orientation quaternions would have been better.
Ps: Fuck Beta
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
"If you like Slashdot classic, you can keep Slashdot classic. Period"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaon#CP_violation_in_neutral_meson_oscillations
Wikipedia has this to say: Since neutral kaons carry strangeness, they cannot be their own antiparticles. Which, to me, may as well me an incantation to be mumbled over three skulls and a chicken. What real-world thing can be made with this knowledge?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Fortunately, you don't have to rely on credibility. Here's a story more than a day old. About 15% of the comments are rated 4 or 5, which is a pretty typical percentage, and all of them are complaining about the beta. It's like that in a lot of stories. As for submissions -- well, they pass through the firehose like everything else, and why you don't ever see submissions from a week ago sticking around in it. That's why it's called the firehose.
It took a day or two, but now when I google "fuck beta" all the top results are from slashdot. Yay.
Yeah, we should be proud of that. Now slashdot has already been added to most filters, reducing access to millions of people, because of the potty mouth nerds who couldn't find a better way to articulate their frustration.
A prolate spheroid doesn't taper to points on the end. You'd need an infinite series of spherical harmonics to describe an American football, not just the degree-2 term. Though it's sufficiently elongated that spherical harmonics might not be the best basis set. Bessel functions?
See, that's why I come to slashdot. Posters on reddit are neither knowledgeable enough to argue that point, nor pedantic enough to point it out.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Stack Exchange should just go ahead and write a Slashdot replacement, I'd be over there in a second. Unlike the trained chimps at Dice, they know how to do web design, they understand the concept of a site driven by user content, and they don't have contempt for their users.
I also have no idea how football will rotate when it is thrown by an right-handed quarterback .... footballs are meant to be kicked, hence the name.
Football does not refer to which part of the body is supposed to connect with the ball (otherwise it'd be called HeadKneeChestHandFootBall), but rather the fact that the game is played on-foot (as opposed to Polo, another old and popular game).
If the spin of the particle (electron in the summary) is germaine to the observed properties of the particle does that mean there are two different particles involved?
Yes! And there always has been. Left-handed particles are not the same as right-handed ones. Quarks in particular come in a dizzying amount of varieties. There are 6 flavors times 3 colors times 2 spins times 2 for regular/anti. So in total there are actually 72 kinds of quark!
But people find it easier to talk about there being fewer kinds and specifying the exact types only as necessary. That makes sense, because particles of one type can change into particles of another type pretty easily. For example, you could have a quark in a superposition of left- and right-handed states. Quarks are constantly changing their color as they exchange gluons with other quarks inside the proton. Flavor and regular/anti change the least, so you generally hear people talk about a "strange quark" or a "top antiquark". But all those other properties are always around.
Well, I went to the beta site the other day to see what the fuss was about.
GHAAHH!!!
Some things you just cannot UNSEE!!!! The horror!!!
It reminded me of the time I had just finished setting up a 4 monitor desktop....Man, I can REALLY slash my dots now!
I went straight to slashdot, and quickly I had 4 different articles with comments opened, one on each screen!!!
Well, then IT happened....
I quickly ran to the restroom, okay, back to the PC...okay.
Drafty? Hmmm...*look down, zipper undone*
I start to zip up my trousers and just then stare in shock!
I had been goatse'd, tub girled, AND trolled by GNAA all at the same time!
I hurriedly finished zipping up...AHHHHH!!! GOT SCROTUM CAUGHT IN ZIPPER!!
And while all of this was going on suddenly the speakers started blaring; floor was shaking, windows shattering, dogs all over the neighborhood started howling, police sirens started coming my way.....I HAD BEEN RICK-ROLLED!!
Thought I was going to die.
And in the end, the Beta site experience was far more traumatic than anything experienced prior on slashdot for me.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti