Physicists Discover "Doubly Strange" Particle 260
Tsalg writes "Physicists have discovered a new particle made of three quarks, the Omega-sub-b. The particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). It is an exotic relative of the much more common proton and weighs about six times the proton mass. This is probably one of the last noticeable sub-atomic discoveries made somewhere else than at CERN since LHC is about to start the hunt for the Higgs particle that remains elusive even for the experiment that just discovered the Omega-sub-b."
Excuse Me? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is probably one of the last noticeable sub-atomic discoveries made somewhere else than at CERN since LHC is about to start the hunt for the Higgs particle that remains elusive even for the experiment that just discovered the Omega-sub-b.
How can you be so sure? It's not like CERN lays claim to all the greatest physicists in the world. Am I the only one that is a bit wary of all the eggs in one basket?
Relative of the proton =? baryon (Score:3, Insightful)
The charge on the new one is -1, the charge on a proton is +1.
Re:justify a paycheck? (Score:5, Insightful)
No no, if they were just making things up to try to get more grants, they would have said they found a new particle made of vibrating strings.
Why not just say Fermilab discovered it? (Score:1, Insightful)
instead of the "not CERN" reference.
Re:justify a paycheck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LHC "Just about to start"? (Score:4, Insightful)
"with the exception of the Apollo Project"
Parts of the Apollo projects were put back several time, not to mention ending up costing around double the original estimate despite consisting of less missions than originally planned (cost overruns are almost always closely related to time overruns).
That's just the nature of big projects (of all types). Nothing specific to do with publicly funded ones, all really big projects commonly take longer than expected. The difference with publicly funded ones is that we all tend to have access to those estimates; whereas private companies tend to just say "it will be done when it's ready" (whilst internally, the estimates are getting put back further and further).
Re:Lamen (Score:3, Insightful)
Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrons [wikipedia.org]
Note that the mass of a hadron has very little to do with the mass of its valence quarks; rather, due to mass-energy equivalence, most of the mass comes from the large amount of energy associated with the strong nuclear force.
To me, this seems to mean that you do not simply sum the masses of the quarks that make up the hadron (a baryon being a kind of hadron).
The image of a proton given in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Quark_structure_proton.svg) represents the three quarks in a triangle. OK, so this is simply a convenient representation, but it may help to think of the masses of the quarks as being vector forces. E.g., 10GeV in one direction + 5GeV in the opposite direction would give a net result of 5GeV, and not 15GeV.
Of course, IANAPP either, and my example is contrived as a metaphor.
K.
Re:Interesting, but (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably one of the last noticeable sub-atomic discoveries made somewhere else than at CERN since LHC is about to start the hunt for the Higgs particle that remains elusive even for the experiment that just discovered the Omega-sub-b.."
In actual English--with tenses--as it used to be used (which is now, as is evident, archaic):
"This recent discovery [of the Omega-sub-b particle] will probably be the last *notable* subatomic discovery made before the Large Hadron Collider at CERN begins to operate, which is scheduled to happen in October of this year. The LHC will be used to hunt for the Higgs Boson, which has thus far remained undetectable, even by experiments such as this one, which managed to find the Omega-sub-b particle."
* The author's clever-at-first-glance use of the adjective "noticeable" fails because it applies to "discoveries," and discoveries rarely go unnoticed, unlike grammar.