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LHC Discovers Pentaquark Particles

Posted by Soulskill on from the quantum-party-of-five dept.

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."

25 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Gillette by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gillette: Fuck it, we're doing five quarks!!

    1. Re:Gillette by amRadioHed · · Score: 3, Informative

      He's actually referring to this famous Onion article:
      http://www.theonion.com/blogpo...

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    2. Re:Gillette by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2

      I know, but then they DID it. Anyway...

  2. This is why physics is the king of the sciences by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:This is why physics is the king of the sciences by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Either that, or you're not the guy who made the incorrect prediction 50 years back....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    2. Re:This is why physics is the king of the sciences by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 4, Informative

      General Relativity is a shining example of this, and the Standard Model is even more so. These theories are among the most accurate predictors of new discoveries, sometimes ridiculously so.

      Meanwhile, String Theory is still kicking around, getting more and more complex, but coming up with very little in the way of prediction. I'm not busting on it... I keep up with the latest work (as much as a non-expert can anyway) and find it fascinating (and/or incomprehensible).

      We are definitely tapping into something real, but whether or not it's fundamental is another question entirely. Newton seemed fundamental, but wasn't. Einstein seems fundamental, but might not be. It seems like there's usually another layer of reality below the one which seems to be fundamental. But everything we uncover is fascinating.

      I guess what I'm trying to say is, "Science is cool".

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    3. Re:This is why physics is the king of the sciences by known_coward_69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      to be fair they have the math worked out for dozens of variants of different theories and need the experiments to confirm which one was right. the original estimates for the higgs boson were all over the place and depending on the energy predicted it would have meant a single dimension, multi-dimensions and lots of other possibilities.

    4. Re:This is why physics is the king of the sciences by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just to tap into another great scientific discovery, the New Horizons mission is a great example of this also. Nine years ago, scientists had to plan a route and engineers had to design systems. All of this had to be extremely precise. New Horizons had a 100 km by 150 km window of space that it had to be in within 100 seconds. If it was out of this area, the photos would return blank space. While we won't know if it hit the target until the photos come back late tonight/early tomorrow, it looks like they hit the mark. That's planning a route 9 years out and 5 billion km away. That took some serious understanding of orbital velocity to accomplish. One tiny mistake and New Horizons would have wound up far away from Pluto.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    5. Re:This is why physics is the king of the sciences by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Informative

      New Horizons had a 100 km by 150 km window of space that it had to be in within 100 seconds. If it was out of this area, the photos would return blank space. While we won't know if it hit the target until the photos come back late tonight/early tomorrow, it looks like they hit the mark. That's planning a route 9 years out and 5 billion km away.

      You left out, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story.

      While they planned the route fourteen years ago, they've spent the last nine years (since launch) analyzing the spacecraft's current trajectory and making mid course corrections as needed to ensure that New Horizons hit the window. If they hadn't done so, less than forty minutes after launch New Horizons would have been doomed to miss Pluto entirely. (The booster ended up performing a little 'hot' - when the final stage was discarded, it was actually going too fast.)

      Don't get me wrong, it's still a fantastic achievement that all they needed was 20 m/s (give or take a little) of course correction - but the fact remains that New Horizons wasn't passively ballistic, it was actively flown.

    6. Re:This is why physics is the king of the sciences by klui · · Score: 2

      Agreed. Here's the page where it shows the significant events of the mission.

      http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Missio...

    7. Re:This is why physics is the king of the sciences by BlackPignouf · · Score: 2

      "Actively flown" with a one-way latency of 4.5 hours.
      Navigating an oil tanker must feel like go-kart in comparison.

  3. PenaQuark? by Caitlin2013D · · Score: 2

    http://i.imgur.com/lkgpKG0.png (stealing someone else's joke but still made me laugh....)

  4. Re:+2/3, -1/3 by canajin56 · · Score: 2

    "More precisely the states must be formed of two up quarks, one down quark, one charm quark and one anti-charm quark.”

    +1.

    --
    ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
  5. Re:+2/3, -1/3 by omnichad · · Score: 4, Funny

    two up quarks, one down quark

    Still haven't discovered the Konami quark then, yet?

  6. Re:+2/3, -1/3 by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Informative

    "More precisely the states must be formed of two up quarks, one down quark, one charm quark and one anti-charm quark.”

    +1.

    In detail...
    up quark: +2/3
    down quark: -1/3
    charm quark: +2/3
    anti-charm quark: -2/3

    2/3 + 2/3 - 1/3 + 2/3 - 2/3 = +1.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  7. SNL: 1975, SNL: 2000 by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2

    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

  8. Re:+2/3, -1/3 by bugs2squash · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thanks - so why don't the charm and the anti-charm go "poof" ?

    --
    Nullius in verba
  9. Re:+2/3, -1/3 by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thanks - so why don't the charm and the anti-charm go "poof" ?

    No doubt they do. Many exotic particles don't have long lifetimes. I'm not sure what the pentaquark's lifetime is.

    The J/psi meson, which consists of a charm-anticharm pair, lives for about 7.2 x 10^-21 s.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  10. Re:How long till it kills us? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  11. Re:Please Speak English by rubycodez · · Score: 2

    Not gobblygook at all, it is perfectly understandable with even undergraduate level knowledge of particle physics.

    Layman's articles targeting high school or less education on this abound, you can find them with search engine.

  12. Re:+2/3, -1/3 by Guy+Harris · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thanks - so why don't the charm and the anti-charm go "poof" ?

    They might not be antiparticles of each other, as they might differ in color charge.

    I think that would violate color confinement because the resulting pentaquark would have a net color.

    Red up quark, blue down quark, blue charmed quark, green up quark, antiblue anti-charmed quark. Net color = R+B+B+G-B = R+B+G = colorless. (Shamelessly lifted from the "2015 LHCb results" section of the Wikipedia page for the pentaquark.)

  13. Re:Please Speak English by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You have stumbled onto the true problem with ignorance: The ignorant refuse to believe they're actually ignorant.

    And the educated know enough to understand the limits of their knowledge and acknowledge their own ignorance, perhaps too much.

  14. Re: Sure, we believe you, LRC... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But a jealous ignoramus would certainly accuse his intellectual superiors of bad faith, rather than accept his inferiority.

  15. What's happened to Slashdot? :) by Xtifr · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  16. Re:Sure, we believe you, LRC... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... and you wouldn't make shit up about stuff that NOBODY ELSE CAN EVER PROVE DOESN'T EXIST, (since they don't have an LRC and never will), in order to get yet more funding for this bullshit, would you...

    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.