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New 'Mystery Meson' Sub-Atomic Particle Discovered 462

Posted by CowboyNeal from the baryons-and-fermions-envious dept.
securitas writes "The BBC reports that scientists in Japan have discovered a new sub-atomic particle that defies current theories of matter and energy. The 'mystery meson' X(3872) was revealed while studying beauty quarks at the KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organization Tsukuba meson factory. 'It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before it decays into other longer-lived, more familiar particles.' Scientists say the lifespan 'is nearly an eternity for a sub-atomic particle this heavy' and may require a change in current theory. Possible explanations for this include the particle being comprised of two quarks and two antiquarks, instead of the usual one-one pairing. More explanation and illustrations at KEK."
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New 'Mystery Meson' Sub-Atomic Particle Discovered More

New 'Mystery Meson' Sub-Atomic Particle Discovered

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  • The Standard Model (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 )
    Do we know whether this particle violates the Standard Model? Because if it does, that could mean a real revolution in Physics.
    • I believe that the article said that it might violate the standard model. If it does, than the discovery will be bigger than quarks (no joke!)!

    • Re:The Standard Model (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jon Erikson ( 198204 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:31PM (#7502631)
      No, they think it is most likely to be a combination of four quarks - charm/anti-charm and up/anti-up. This hasn't been seen before but is perfectly valid under the standard model... they've already seen pentaquark [aip.org] states after all.
      • > No, they think it is most likely to be a combination of four quarks - charm/anti-charm and up/anti-up. This hasn't been seen before but is perfectly valid under the standard model... they've already seen pentaquark states after all.

        Pentaquark, fine, but four quarks?! Time to reinvent QCD. *shudder*

      • Re:The Standard Model (Score:5, Informative)

        by Sdoh ( 628782 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @03:29PM (#7504322)
        Just one more sensation out of misunderstood
        scientific paper.

        I work with the team which confirmed it at Fermi in X(3872) -> J/Psi Pion Pion.

        Some background on quarks first:

        There are six quarks d, u, s, c, b, t. The heaviest are on the right.
        And six antiquarks d(bar), u(bar), s(bar)... you've got the idea.

        d, s, b have charge -1/3.
        u, c, t have charge 2/3,
        antiquarks and quarks have opposite charge.

        All the matter consist of the particles which
        are combinations of quarks. There are several
        types of observed combinations: Mesons, Barions,
        Tetraquarks, Pentaquarks. They are correspondingly
        consist from 2, 3, 4 or 5 quarks.

        All the Mesons consist of quark and antiquark. Examples:

        Pion = (u, d(bar)); //charge +1
        Kaon =(s, u(bar)); //charge -1
        J/Psi =(c, c(bar)); //charge 0
        D =(c, u(bar)); //charge 0
        D(bar)=(c(bar), u); //charge 0

        Barions consist of 3 quarks. Examples:

        Proton =(u, u, d ); //charge +1
        Neutron =(d, d, u ); //charge 0
        Antiproton =(u(bar), u(bar), d(bar)); //charge -1

        You may continue it yourself for Tetraquarks and Pentaquarks.
        Make sure the total charge of the particle is integer.

        Heavy quarks want to decay to a ligter ones.
        Eventually to u, d, u(bar), d(bar) and also
        leptons (electron, muon) neutrinos and photons.

        Some people think that X(3872) is one of the exited states of (c, c(bar)). Some people think
        that it could be a tetraquark (c, c(bar), u, u(bar)). We should observe other modes
        to know for sure. I am looking for X(3872) -> DD (bar).
        No luck so far.

        It is definitely very exiting to see a new particle like it would be exiting
        to see a new chemical element. As far as I know it fit quite nicely
        in the standard model - the analog of the Mendeleev table for particle physics.
    • From the press release:

      However, as its name implies, the X(3872) particle is peculiar in that it does not easily fit into any known particle scheme and, as a result, has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the world's physics community.

      I'd say the Standard Model would fall under "any known particle scheme"... so yes, if their results are real and reproducable, this particle would violate the Standard Model.

      • Re:The Standard Model (Score:5, Informative)

        by Popadopolis ( 724438 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:35PM (#7502672) Journal
        It was verified by the Fermi National Partical Accelerator Lab.
        Its discovery was recently confirmed by researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, US, home of the Tevatron, the world's largest atom smasher. It was the US outfit that gave X(3872) its mystery tag.
      • I don't think its a violation. Just an unknown implementation. This implementation could add new information to their model which may indeed cause some changes in theory. Perhaps I'm being pedantic. But when all is not known, its hard to call anything a violation.

    • Re:The Standard Model (Score:5, Interesting)

      by darkstar949 ( 697933 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:33PM (#7502661)
      According to the articals the particle doesn't violate the Standard Model, however, the current Standard Model will need a change to allow for this particle. Of course it should be noted that the Standard Model is a patch-work affair based on observation with out much understanding of how everything fits together and as such will still don't know how everything works.
    • If this is "Overthrow the Standard Model"-class Big News, I would like to see it duplicated first. Otherwise it's just an invisible purple dragon floating in my garage...
      • The Belle discovery was recently confirmed by researchers with the CDF experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, home of the Tevatron, the world's largest atom smasher. There the X(3872) is referred to as the "mystery meson."

        I had that concern too, so I was looking for this. Sorry, but you earned this:

        RTFAs.

        No hard feelings, I hope.

      • Re:Double check... (Score:5, Funny)

        by azzy ( 86427 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:40PM (#7502719) Journal
        How do we know that you didn't have a purple dragon in your garage for about one billionth of a trillionth of a second?
        • Until the door is opened we don't :-)
        • How do we know that you didn't have a purple dragon in your garage for about one billionth of a trillionth of a second?

          I think we know for certain that a purple dragon *was* in the garage, we just don't know *when* it was there.

          Or do we know that a purple dragon was in *a* garage at 10:40am, but we don't know *which* garage?

          Purple dragon physics always confused me in high school.
      • You just have to look at the purple dragon by squinting through the sides of your eyes when nobody else is around. Then you can spend hours alone in your garage watching the purple dragon floating freely. It's not a bad life for either one of you.
    • I guess this is kind of a knotty problem?
    • I tend to go for the "we're spewing particles out of an accelerator just to see what happens and looking at the results in a roundabout way to extrapolate the existence of particles."

      The methods themselves are not questionable, but extrapolation such as this can easily lead to errors in conclusions drawn.

      • I tend to go for the "we're spewing particles out of an accelerator just to see what happens and looking at the results in a roundabout way to extrapolate the existence of particles."

        Extrapolate how? Looking at the results [www.kek.jp] there appears to be an unaccounted-for mass concentration present in the reaction. If it's not a new type of particle then what? The evidence is there, now the task is to find an explanation for the phenomena.

        The methods themselves are not questionable, but extrapolation such as thi

    • The standard model is pretty well fucked anyway. It's not a revolution, it's a kick in the ass that's going to force us to re-examine a large amount of our basic assumptions/research done in the Standard Model.

      Already outstanding issues include pentaquarks [eurekalert.org] (5-quark exotic baryons), the inability to find the Higgs boson [lbl.gov] (not so much finding it, but having the found mass be correct), muon g-factor anomalies [physicscentral.com], and kaon decay [bnl.gov], to name but a few.

      I guess what I'm saying is: it's going to be a long time. Don't
    • Scientists have found a sub-atomic particle they cannot explain using current theories of energy and matter.

      The Japanese team says understanding its existence may require a change to the Standard Model, the accepted theory of the way the Universe is constructed.

      But X(3872) is peculiar in that it does not fit easily into any known particle scheme and, as a result, has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the world's physics community.

      However, again, X(3872) does not match theoretical ex
    • "Violating" the standard model doesn't mean as much as it might at first glance. The standard model is largely a kludge to get things to fit together. It really is purely fitting data to experiment. It doesn't have an elegant underlying math from which everything makes sense. (Which isn't to say it doesn't make predictions)

      The standard model has been looked down upon for a long time, even though it is the best we have. I'd say that superstrings or loop theories might give us the long sought for GUT.

  • It is always changing and bringing new and exciting information.

  • Oh, Man... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Steve B ( 42864 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:27PM (#7502596)
    I hate it when I come in for lunch and the lab has "Mystery Mesons".

  • Skin deep? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Citizen of Earth ( 569446 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:29PM (#7502613)
    ...was revealed while studying beauty quarks...

    I knew it wasn't just in the eye of the beholder.

  • Mystery Meson X? (Score:3, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06NO@SPAMemail.com> on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:30PM (#7502620)
    She was always my favorite character in the "SubAtomic Defenders" series. But like a lot of her fans, I resent the description of her as "heavy". Perhaps zaftig would be a more accurate phrase. All I know is she filled out her uniform in a pleasing way.

    • Celebrity Lawsuit Pending (Score:4, Funny)

      by LiberalApplication ( 570878 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @02:20PM (#7503695)
      Next on Entertainment Tonight: overnight particle physics sensation D Meson X(4158) is threatening legal action against the popular tabloid, "Physics Review" for what it claims is "misleading representation" of its relationship with D Meson X(1924), which it has recently been spotted interacting strongly with at the posh KEK Tsukuba Positron-Electron Supercollider in Japan. X(4158)'s lawyers also stated that further intrusions into the popular particle's privacy by the subatomic paparazzi would not be tolerated, and that a particle's spin-orientation is none of your business.

  • Here's the press release (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pingular ( 670773 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:30PM (#7502622)
    from the Institute of Physics [iop.org]

  • US Research (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tintruder ( 578375 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:32PM (#7502638)
    Astounding findings such as this and their long-term implications for theory and eventual application certainly prove the worth of physics research programs.

    Too bad the US cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider some years back.

    Why? It cost too much.

    And how much are we spending in Iraq for benefits denied to our own citizens?

    Priorities?

    • eventual application

      Yeah, right. I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon. It's like the collider-boys sitting in their comfy chairs have a such an big and expensive machine that there's no way their research will ever be closed down. It would be too embarrasing to the ones who started funding them in the first place...

      Spend the money on Earth sciences or, heck, build a dozen stations on the moon and star

      • Re:US Research (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pmz ( 462998 )
        I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon.

        Actually, those applications are simply beyond your horizon.

        • Re:US Research (Score:5, Insightful)

          by goodviking ( 71533 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:50PM (#7502824) Journal
          And further, why does every dollar spent have to have a concrete application as it's ultimate goal. What's wrong exactly with the expansion of collective human knowledge as a goal in and of itself. If we base all of our policy decisions on whether we can use it to shoot someone or make toast, then we'll wind up with a lot of dead bodies and a lot of fancy toasters. I'm personally happy that we provide money for topologists and don't ask them to work on an assembly line.

      • Re:US Research (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Malor ( 3658 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:46PM (#7502782) Journal
        Overall, money invested in science has historically paid off at better than 10-1. You see a lot of projects that dead-end or don't produce all that much of value, but every once in awhile you get a major, bonanza strike. Problem is, you can't tell which projects will be the big hits until afterward, so it looks like a big waste of money.

        It isn't. We're still benefiting (enormously!) from the basic research done in the 1950s; they had ideas back then we still haven't fully tapped. Every time someone looks back at one of those obscure reports and says "hey, wait a minute!".... it's a payoff. We have long, long since paid off the money we invested in the 1950s, and made a handsome profit to boot. Everything after that is gravy.

        Research... the gift that keeps on giving. :-)

        • Re:US Research (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @01:56PM (#7503476) Homepage
          Overall, money invested in science has historically paid off at better than 10-1.

          True in general, but generally false for big science. As Luis Alvarez (a famous experimentalist) pointed out large amounts of research money tend to lead to wasteful experimental science. Michelson-Morley done today would have been along the lines of

          1. Send satellite to orbit
          2. Satellite doesn't work, send repair crew
          3. Send second satellite to orbit moving in reverse direction
          4. Send super duper high power laser beam from satellite A to satellite B
          5. Measure speed difference using built in atomic clocks
          6. Conclude that speed of light is independent of "ether"

          Total bill: a few billion dollars.

          Total cost of Michelson-Morley as originally done: a few thousand dollars.

          (insert "priceless" joke here)

      • Re:US Research (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @01:29PM (#7503221)
        > Yeah, right. I've always been amazed at how Big Science constantly rakes in billions and billions of dollars without any real applications on the horizon. It's like the collider-boys sitting in their comfy chairs have a such an big and expensive machine that there's no way their research will ever be closed down. It would be too embarrasing to the ones who started funding them in the first place...
        >
        > Spend the money on Earth sciences or, heck, build a dozen stations on the moon and start beaming energy down here. That would benefit the whole world and it can be done NOW.

        ~ wavy lines as the Time machine takes us back to 1908, where the poster's great-grandfather is ranting at "Printdot" ~

        Right on! Natural Philosophy constantly rakes in the Nobel Prizes without any real applications on the horizon. It's like that damned fool Rutherford sitting in his comfy chair watching his stupid contraption that throws helium ions into gold foil! Who
        cares if the atom is like a plum pudding or if it has a nucleus or not? There'll never be any practical application, why, Helium isn't even reactive!

        Spend the money on Whaling science, or, heck, just chop down the trees, burn them all, use the heat to boil water, and spin a turbine connected to a bunch of big thick wires, and start sending the energy over here. That would benefit the whole world and it can be done NOW.

        ~ Thus endeth the flashback ~

        • ~~~ diddly doo - diddly doo - diddly doo ~~~

          (as we head further and further back...)

          Ugh! Cro-Magnons over there getting all the best meat, but they bring no fire that I see. It like Ugar over there banging rocks together! Any fool know that fire come from sky, not from rocks and stones.

          Me say build many many fire pits and fill them with kindling. When great fire strikes come from sky, it sure to hit one of them, which we can use to light others and always have fire. That would help whole tribe, and

    • Re:US Research (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xzzy ( 111297 )
      Even better, funding interest in FNAL is waning year by year, even though it is at the moment the largest accelerator on the planet (CERN will take that role whenever it's completed).

      The inability for the common grunt to see any value in this research is putting some real strain in the system; people want results and stuff they can buy at wal-mart. Banging subatomic particles together, to date, isn't accomplishing that.

      But this stuff is critically important for humanity to figure out, because the way I se

    • And how much are we spending in Iraq for benefits denied to our own citizens?

      It's seen as worthwhile by those who will hold the power after it is consolodated from the people and the states.

      What does physics research do, anyway? Empower the public with advances in knowledge and technology providing solutions to difficult problems and building new markets to boost the world economy?!? Bah!

  • Paging Mr. Arthur Dent... (Score:3, Funny)

    by smack_attack ( 171144 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:32PM (#7502639) Homepage
    ...Mr. Arthur Dent, please report to the particle physics lab and make confused faces.

    That is all.

  • String Theory (Score:4, Interesting)

    by attobyte ( 20206 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:32PM (#7502651)
    So what does this mean for the String Theory?

    • Re:String Theory (Score:5, Informative)

      by jpflip ( 670957 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @01:07PM (#7502984)
      Probably not very much, but who knows? String theory generally deals with phenomena at energy scales MUCH higher than these accelerators are dealing with, so high in fact that it really doesn't make any useful predictions about ordinary phenomena (even particle accelerator phenomena!) It's sort of like trying to predict the shape of a snowflake if all you've ever seen is steam. That's one of the main complaints about the theory - it may be right, it may be wrong, but it doesn't have any major prospects for predictions we could even test!
      • I thought that was the whole reason that people studied it... I mean, you make an entire career on 'doing' string theory and never have to really worry about being shown wrong.

  • I always loved particle physics (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:33PM (#7502653) Homepage Journal
    gotta love how they study something by smashing it into peices. I always pictured using the same technique to study how a radio works by shooting bullets into it, and then observing the peices as they fly out of the radio :-)

    • Re:I always loved particle physics (Score:4, Funny)

      by spektr ( 466069 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:51PM (#7502836)
      gotta love how they study something by smashing it into peices. I always pictured using the same technique to study how a radio works by shooting bullets into it, and then observing the peices as they fly out of the radio :-)

      After Heisenberg tried this he discovered his famous uncertainty princinple: the more precise you measure the inner workings of the radio, the more likely it is that it changes its mode of operation in a major way.

    • Study by smashing (Score:3, Informative)

      by dpilot ( 134227 )
      Years back, IBM had an advertisement in Scientific American. It showed a stop-motion picture of a hammer smashing a watch, and pieces flying out. The text said something to the effect of, "Imaging learning how a watch works by smashing it and examining the pieces as they fly out. That's how we do subatomic physics." The gist of the ad was that IBM computers helped in that daunting process.

  • Aggregation creates stabilization? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:42PM (#7502737)
    I'm not surprised that unsual particles like this are being discovered. Perhaps the long halflife of this particle suggests that aggregation can lead to stablization. In the same way that neutrons are stabilized by protons on the nuclei of everyday matter, I'd bet that mesons can be stabilized either by other mesons or baryons.

    Perhaps this won't overturn pre-existing models for elementary particles, but lead to extensions of theories on how aggregates of these particles behave.
    • So, what you're saying is "If you stick a bunch of subatomic particles together, they become more stable". Umm... if you stick enough sub-atomic particles together, won't you eventually get something that's kinda like a nice stable atom?

  • Abstraction (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:43PM (#7502752)

    One thing I'm not clear about when we're talking about sub-atomic particles - how do we know we've got it right? I mean, the idea that these are particles - discrete physical entities if you like - comes from observations of effect and are, as far as I can tell, purely abstractions of what is actually going on. Sometimes abstractions - which of course helps the human mind get understand complex things - can actually mislead. How do we know we've got our thinking right about how sub-atomic particles work?

    • Re:Abstraction (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:50PM (#7502823)
      The whole point of the scientific method is that you get a model that works; then, somewhere down the road, you find something new and your model doesn't work anymore, so you change the model.

      Our thinking about how subatomic particles work - even to the most basic level that we have "particles" (well, wave packets, but..) that we envision as skittering around interacting and such - is only valid because it works.

      The question "Well, then, what is actually going on?" is meaningless. You don't actually know, and so you make better and better models to find out. In the end, you may have a model based on thinking of atoms as little cats; that may not be "what's actually going on", but if it fits experiment then what's the real difference?

    • Re:Abstraction (Score:2, Informative)

      by jpflip ( 670957 )
      That's a deep question, and I guess in some sense we don't know. As with most of science, you accumulate evidence and test your theory. If the theory always gives the right answer, even when you try to prove it wrong a million different ways, then you assume you're on to something (or, at least, you start believing it will probably give you the right answer to your next question). Physicists currently believe that the Standard Model is only an approximation to something a bit deeper - the things we think

    • Re:Abstraction (Score:3, Insightful)

      by f97tosc ( 578893 )
      One thing I'm not clear about when we're talking about sub-atomic particles - how do we know we've got it right?

      As far as scientists are concerned, they got it right when they make predictions that are verified by experiments. Period. Whether it is "true" or a "misleading abstraction" is for the philosophers and the priests to sort out.

      In this case, they did not get it right because the new particle was not predicted. This has lead to new hypothesis such as a 4-quark particle. If such an hypothesis a
  • It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before it decays into other longer-lived, more familiar particles.
    Maybe this was the sole neuron found in G.W.'s cranium!

    (/me straps in for the impending moderation roller coaster)
  • Apart from the silly names they give to these sub atomic particles, does this mean that we are anywhere nearer to finding the mythical Higgs Boson?

  • Anyone else (Score:5, Funny)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:45PM (#7502775)
    ...ever get the feeling that partical physicists are just sharing one big self-delusion?

    "Hey Bob, did you hear? Joe discovered a new kind of...uh...Meson!"
    "A...Meson? Oh...yeah, Meson, of course. I know what that is."
    "Yeah, check out this graph, see that spike right there for 1 billionth-trillionth of a second?"
    "Uh...yeah! Yeah, I see it! Right there!"
    "No, over there."
    "Right! Right over there! Wow, that's great. Well, I'm off to go discover a...uh...new kind of...Foofara?"
    "Wow....Foofara huh? Wow...that's awesome...Good Luck!"
  • This new particle should be called a Mysteron [bbc.co.uk]

  • Physicists (Score:5, Funny)

    by R2.0 ( 532027 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @12:58PM (#7502909)
    A college Philosophy professor of mine tells a story about high energy physics and the practitioners thereof. He was researching a book on the philosophy of science and was interviewing one of the researchers at Fermilab (I think).

    After discussing some of the esoterica of the field, my professor says "Okay. Off the record, do you *actually* believe that some of these particles exist outside of mathematical equations?"

    Scientist looks around and replies "Not really. But this stuff is a lot of fun!"

    • Re:Physicists (Score:5, Funny)

      by gdr ( 107158 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @02:18PM (#7503680)
      For a moment there I thought you were going to tell the following joke:

      A physics professor came to his dean, "We need another million dollars to upgrade our experimental set."

      The dean complains "Why can't you guys be like math department, they only need pens, paper and waste baskets? Or better still the philosophy department, they only need pens and paper."

  • Hurrah! down with the standard model!

    Warp speed and time travel might yet be possible!

  • How long? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @01:17PM (#7503086) Homepage
    exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second

    So, exactly how long is that? In the US, that would be 10e-21 seconds. But this is being reported by the BBC, and most of the English speaking world outside of the US doesn't consider 1 billion = 1000 million (instead it's 1 million million). So is it 10e-21 seconds or 10e-36 seconds (if I did my math right, which I probably didn't)? That's a rather large difference, and I couldn't find a definitive reference in any of the linked articles or PhysicsWeb.

    That said, how do you detect particles that exist for this short a period of time anyway?

    • Re:How long? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 )
      "That said, how do you detect particles that exist for this short a period of time anyway?"

      I would guess based either on the distance it travels and/or the momentum of it's decay particles.
    • No. Its been a while since 1 billion = 1 million million was common usage in Britain.

      We use 1000 Million like the US now. Well, I'm sure there are *some people* who don't. You know how people get attached to archaic measurements. But the common usage is 1000 Million.

    • Re:How long? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kiwimate ( 458274 )
      By common agreement, the American convention of a billion = 1,000,000,000 is used in professional contexts. More information from here [askoxford.com]:

      How many is a billion?

      If you are American, it is undoubtedly 1,000,000,000. This amount is known to traditionally minded British people as `a thousand million', and by some more adventurous ones as a 'milliard', though this word has not made as much headway in English as in some other European languages. A trillion is then 1,000,000,000,000, and so on.

      If you are Britis

  • For real physics look here (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those of you interested in reading the actual paper, have a look at http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0309032 [arxiv.org] Warning: Contains sentenses like "We determine a ratio of product branching fractions" and "measurement of the width for this decay channel" - scary stuff!
  • ... it's probably made up of quirks instead of quarks.
  • Could this be the graviton string theorists are looking for?

  • Scientific Notation, please! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @10:09PM (#7507692)
    "exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second"

    Remember, people: "billion" and "trillion" mean very different things to people in different English-speaking parts of the world. Exponents and/or SI prefixes are the proper way to express numbers like this.

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