New Particle Identified At LHC 164
First time accepted submitter m4ktub writes "A team of researchers working with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC have published an article in arXiv where they describe what is believed to be the first observation of a new particle: the boson Chi-b (3P). Professor Roger Jones, Head of the Lancaster ATLAS group, said 'While people are rightly interested in the Higgs boson, which we believe gives particles their mass and may have started to reveal itself, a lot of the mass of everyday objects comes from the strong interaction we are investigating using the Chi-b.'"
Re:Chibi Higgs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not saying that the Higgs does exist, what I am saying is that because a particle does not exist in isolation does not intrinsically mean that the particle's existence is ruled out from the standard model. Force carriers / bosons are governed by a different set of rules than fermions, so the 'unique isolation' argument doesn't really apply as cleanly as you assert it to.
The electrostatic interaction is mediated by virtual photons, you will never see any of these virtual photons in isolation but the interaction strengths of the force are accurately modeled using this concept. The Higgs field is similar in this regard, theoretically. I do general relativity mostly, so any particle physicist out there feel free to correct my any travesties I have spewed.
Quark and anti-quark? (Score:3, Interesting)
The new particle is made up of a 'beauty quark' and a 'beauty anti-quark', which are then bound together
Can anyone explain why do they not annihilate?
Re:A new particle or a new state of known particle (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Chibi Higgs? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is we have the 'graviton' listed as the force carrier, but we have not seen or don't even really know what a graviton would look like, so the Higgs is almost and alternate / parallel description of the mechanism. As you get lower and lower much of this stuff is counter-intuitive, overlapping, and some times more non-nonsensical than the prior theories. Gluon bindings of quarks are a very strange concept, you can have 3-quark systems bound by gluons, and when you 'stretch' one quark away from the others, more gluons 'appear from the void' to fill the stretched gap.
At this point my analogies are probably killing the particle physicist reading this, and I am reaching to levels below full honest familiarity.
Re:Chibi Higgs? (Score:5, Interesting)
So therein lies the rub: at some point general relativity and quantum mechanics will have to be reconciled, and it will be a wonderful time in physics if there really is the possibility of a GUT; else-wise the two may just be complementary theories only applicable at certain scales of analysis. Or maybe perhaps the mathematics involved and the axioms we rely on insofar are restricted by Godel Incompleteness, and maybe new types of mathematical relationships and logical concepts will be needed to fulfilled the requirements of a logically consistent GUT.
Re:Chibi Higgs? (Score:3, Interesting)