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LHC Discovers Pentaquark Particles
mrspoonsi sends news that researchers running experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have published findings confirming the existence of pentaquark particles, first predicted in the 1960s by Murray Gell Mann and George Zweig. The particles consist of five quarks bound together. Further research will examine exactly how this binding works.
Previous experiments had measured only the so-called mass distribution where a statistical peak may appear against the background "noise" - the possible signature of a novel particle. But the collider enabled researchers to look at the data from additional perspectives, namely the four angles defined by the different directions of travel taken by particles within LHCb. "We are transforming this problem from a one-dimensional to a five dimensional one... we are able to describe everything that happens in the decay," said Dr. Koppenburg, who first saw a signal begin to emerge in 2012. "There is no way that what we see could be due to something else other than the addition of a new particle that was not observed before."
Gillette: Fuck it, we're doing five quarks!!
I for one welcome our exotic matter overlords.
When the mathematics is so powerful that it can make accurate predictions far in advance of their ability to be verified, you know you are connecting with the fundamental mechanisms that drive the universe.
so this must the be the Satan Particle.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
http://i.imgur.com/lkgpKG0.png (stealing someone else's joke but still made me laugh....)
So what's the net charge on a pentaquark ?
Nullius in verba
Saturday Night Live 1975: Triple Trac Razor Blade
The Late Show (1990's): Gillette 3000
Saturday Night Live 2000: Platinum Mach 14
The Onion: 2004
Any other day this would be so cool for science geeks. But today we're all just waiting for the photos of Pluto to come streaming back to us.
The biggest problem with modern particle physics isn't String Theory, or Dark Matter, or the costs of experiments. The biggest problem is that particle physicts now speak, consciously or not, in what is effectively a cant. I'm reasonably well educated in physics and mathematics, but this is basically gobbydegook.
A certain amount of technical jargon is nessesary but this is the abstract. It gets worse further into the paper. I'm seeing this more an more in papers and fields across the sciences. Impenetrable cant. It's a very far cry from the readable and engaging papers once seen even in the middle of the last century.
The author's should have taken the time to employ the english -- or alternatives -- language but instead I think this abstract was drafted by a committee who forgot that they would be talking to people who weren't themselves. This is the first non-Higgs big result out of the LHC. It's an opportunity to catch wider public interest. Dropping the ball like this and, I suspect, falling back on jargon in lieu of well constructed sentences does a minor disservice to the amount of time and effort spent on these experiments.
That "spatting of atoms", if that's what you want to call collisions with protons (positively ionized hydrogen), happens naturally all the time. Space is spatting you right now with them.
Why do it? To understand the universe. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Where is the payoff? You're soaking in it. By the end of 1998 (my estimate), ONE spinoff technology of high energy physics--the World Wide Web we are using--had paid for the ENTIRE field, from its VERY BEGINNING up to that time, with interest. The rest since is gravy. You're welcome (IAAPP). What are we going to get by continuing? Well, of what use is a new-born baby?
But a jealous ignoramus would certainly accuse his intellectual superiors of bad faith, rather than accept his inferiority.
Ok, three links, one to an actual pre-pub paper, one to CERN's official press release, and one to a reputable news source? What's wrong with this submitter? Don't you know that Slashdot links are supposed to go to some random bozo's blog, where he rants about the political repercussions of a discovery like this, and how it will affect free software/NSA spying/Sharia law/the Lizard people, all with no useful links to any hard data anywhere, but hundreds of ads? :)
Seriously, I've been expecting this since the recent announcement of a possible tetraquark particle, but I certainly didn't expect it this soon. Very cool.
There's nothing more adorable than the special brand of naivete that goes around wearing cynicism's clothes. I could just pinch your cheeks right off.
The harder you hit things, the more pieces they break into.
Have gnu, will travel.