SELEX at Fermilab Discovers New Particle 259
sellthesedownfalls writes "Scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will announce on Friday, June 18 the observation of an unexpected new member of a family of subatomic particles called 'heavy-light' mesons. The new meson, a combination of a strange quark and a charm antiquark, is the heaviest ever observed in this family, and it behaves in surprising ways -- it apparently breaks the rules on decaying into other particles. See the Fermilab Press Release."
Rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid question! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid question! (Score:4, Insightful)
Doubtful.
They "discovered" that nature behaves in a certain way. How is it not a "discovery"? You can't call it an "invention" because it's not like they're designing these particles before creating them.
I like the way humans think (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it couldn't be that we've made a mistake. It was the naughty meson's fault.
Re:Johnson Rod (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, experiments like this might poke holes in the Standard Model, which could lead to new area to explore in High Energy physics. Who knows what nature has hidden at the fermi level?
And yes, I used to do particle physics, so this immediatly caught my attention.
No such thing as "breaks the rules" (Score:5, Insightful)
As an aside, a friend in college was religious because of this very issue. He hated the fact that science couldn't "make up its mind" abut what was true or not -- for him, an erroneous certainty was more comfortable than a changing, but progressively more correct uncertainty.
Re:Johnson Rod (Score:4, Insightful)
BTM
If it weren't for deviations like this... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's always fun to find a fault in the theory and then find a way to fix the theory, especially when that fix is elegant and makes all sorts of really cool predictions that you could not have made before.
Re:Stupid question! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a bit more than curve fitting (Score:4, Insightful)
Much science is about taking those emperical results and coming up with theory that explains what they mean.
Re:No such thing as "breaks the rules" (Score:3, Insightful)
Note however, I am completely NOT religous, and despite their only shortcoming, I think science and reason are the only feasible tools we can use to understand the universe. Or said in another way, for things which are knowable and understandable, science and reason are the best way to find them.
Re:Stupid question! (Score:4, Insightful)
If no one has ever seen a meson like this before then -- regardless of whether they've been flying around the universe for billions of years -- I consider it a discovery, because we (humanity) have never noticed it before now. It's new. It's a discovery.
Rules (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd expect that in the future, what we take for granted as a rule will be stretched, shrunk, or even broken. I'm not sure when it will be "over," but chances are that we'll be over before we learn all we could about the universe (possibly due to misunderstanding how it works).
Re:Here comes the God Squad. (Score:1, Insightful)
Scientists are on a quest for truth, using solely that which we have actually observed (as compared to that which was written in a large book thousands of years ago) as their guide.
Ever consider that your interpretations of your observations are incorrect? We are human afterall. We do make mistakes. Don't believe everything you see.
And as for the large book written thousands of years ago, it was at least written by people who knew what they were talking about and witnessed various items that were then included in that large book. They were around when some of those events occurred and for the events they weren't around for they were told by a higher power what had transpired. I guess it's up to you to decide to believe a higher power that created the universe and then told others about it or to believe people who were never around during that time testify as to how things came into being and want us to believe they know what what they are talking about when they can only guess.
When a higher power creates something as complicated as the universe it might tip you off that just maybe it is too complicated for mere humans to comprehend and although we can reach a partial understanding we will never reach a full understanding because our minds are human and we think like humans...and have biases and agendas to fight for. We are already getting to a point where thinking about black holes and other related items is a realm only a few thousand people can comprehend and the math required is only for the elite. It may be only a matter of time before no level of human intelligence can unravel everything about the universe. But even then I know some scientists will still dismiss any higher power being involved in the Creation.
Re:Here comes the God Squad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Physicists, help me out here (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, there's plenty we don't understand about the big issues. We don't know what most matter is. We don't know why the universe seems to be expanding faster than it should. We don't have any theory of quantum gravity. We don't know why galaxies formed, and why they formed so damn fast. We don't really seem to completely understand the strong force - and it's prying the lid off things like this that will get us there.
So, as a physicist, I'd say there's still cool stuff to be done. You just might have to work hard in a lab or behind a desk for years and years to do it.
Re:Rules (Score:4, Insightful)
Or even, maybe it never can be "over". Perhaps there will always be weaknesses in theories to explain weaknesses in older ones, ad infinitum. All theories are simply models to reduce the workings of the universe to a form we can make sense of. There may be no perfect model.
I forgot who said this, but there's a quote that reads something like, "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagined, but it may be stranger than we can imagine."