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Science

New Subatomic Particle Discovered 46

Posted by michael from the charmed-life dept.
Cyndi writes "A new subatomic particle has been discovered by researchers at Stanford. It seems to be "an unusual configuration of a charm quark and a strange anti-quark"."
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New Subatomic Particle Discovered More

New Subatomic Particle Discovered

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  • Naked charm!?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @06:50AM (#5841778) Journal

    From the article, it sounds as if this particle would exhibit naked charm (and naked (anti-)strange as well I assume). This seems astounding to me (at a quarter to five AM at least). Last I heard that sort of thing was on mother nature's short list of no-nos.

    -- MarkusQ

    • Re:Naked charm!?! (Score:5, Informative)

      by barawn ( 25691 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:07AM (#5842174) Homepage
      Might be a little too early in the morning. This guy is just a resonance of D_s+, which has a mass of 1968 MeV, and also is made up of c & s_bar. Naked charm just means the particle has a c and no c_bar, which is perfectly fine. Charmed particles have been around for a while now.
      • > We have discovered a new charm particle in an experiment designed to probe the difference between matter and antimatter using bottom quarks. Sometimes the most exciting discoveries come from unexpected directions.

        One question: How do they know they accidentally discovered it and that they did not accidentally invent it anew?

        Thanks.
        • Apparently, all it takes is an electron-positron annihilation with total energy around 10.6 GeV (and of course, looking in the right place). Surely you don't think this is the first time in the history of the universe that such an annihilation has happened...

        • What's the difference? (Score:3, Informative)

          by barawn ( 25691 )
          Because the definition of a "particle" in this case is completely arbitrary. It's a charm and an antistrange quark in a bound configuration. You can 'imagine' it as the charm and the antistrange orbiting each other (though this isn't strictly true!) There's a 'ground state' for a D_s+, which is like 1970 MeV as I said above. This is an 'excited state'. In particle physics you call excited states new 'particles'.

          We know we didn't 'invent' it because a c and an s_bar existed a long time before this guy. We j

      • Might be a little too early in the morning. This guy is just a resonance of D_s+, which...is made up of c & s_bar...Charmed particles have been around for a while now.

        Duh. Thanks. I should learn not to try to think physics on my way back to bed from a diaper change. (Better yet: I shouldn't stop and check e-mail/slashdot either.)

        Hey, at least I wasn't coding in my sleep.

        -- MarkusQ

  • What the Quark? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neck_of_the_Woods ( 305788 ) * on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @06:57AM (#5841809) Journal

    Could someone explain the who Anti-Quark, Naked Quark, Bio-Polar Quark, Spring Break Quark, and Got my head up my ass CIO Quark please?

  • That's not really an event (Score:4, Informative)

    by KDan ( 90353 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @07:37AM (#5841995) Homepage
    There's tons of different configurations of fundamental particles, especially quarks. Though the people who set up the accelerators and did this must be pretty chuffed, and have indeed contributed to the advancement of particle physics by helping repertoriate more of the possible combinations, there's nothing even remotely interesting to anyone who's not a particle physicist working on this type of quark configuration.

    Now if they had discovered a new fundamental particle, or if that particle exhibited properties in contradiction with the current laws of particle physics (eg symmetry breaking), that would be worth posting...

    Daniel

    • importance is in the details (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:22AM (#5842306)
      The combination was not the surprise, but the missing mass is, which suggests that the theoretical calculation of the binding force is incorrect (though such calculation is often an approximation themself) This usually signals that some aspect of the theory on the force is wrong or that their is yet another particle that was undetected, thus robbing some mass away. (Neutrino was 'discovered' this way)

      • The combination was not the surprise, but the missing mass is, which suggests that the theoretical calculation of the binding force is incorrect (though such calculation is often an approximation themself) This usually signals that some aspect of the theory on the force is wrong or that their is yet another particle that was undetected, thus robbing some mass away. (Neutrino was 'discovered' this way)

        Well, sorta. In the case of the neutrino, conservation of energy and momentum gave you a solid expectati

  • Must be LOVE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SillySlashdotName ( 466702 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:50AM (#5842962)
    a charm quark with ... an anti strange [quark]

    Love makes strange bedfellows...

    This force, unlike most others in nature, becomes stronger as the distance between the two quarks increases.

    Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

    They have discovered the LOVE particle!
    • This force, unlike most others in nature, becomes stronger as the distance between the two quarks increases.

      Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

      They have discovered the LOVE particle!

      Yes, and it's called a "gluon".

  • Quark is so overrated... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @10:36AM (#5843438) Homepage
    I prefer Neelix's portrayal of the Grand Proxy in "False Profits"!
  • before they discover the evil-bit quark?

    Yup. Recycling old jokes ad nauseam.

  • Binding force gets stronger with distance? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lafe ( 595258 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @02:45PM (#5846393) Homepage
    "The new particle called the Ds (2317), which combines a charm quark with another heavy quark - an anti strange, has unexpected properties that will provide insight into the force that binds the quarks together. This force, unlike most others in nature, becomes stronger as the distance between the two quarks increases."
    So, if I read this right, as long as you have enough of these particles, or none of them, you're fine.

    But what happens if you've only got one of them here, and the nearest other one is in a neighboring galaxy? Massive destruction? Infinite attraction? Or just enough attraction to get a geek a date?

  • Perpetual motion, here I come... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by clambake ( 37702 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @04:56PM (#5848050) Homepage
    This force, unlike most others in nature, becomes stronger as the distance between the two quarks increases.

    For the physicists out there, if this forces is true, then what stops somone from developing a device based on it and, say, some electromagetic force (or just plain old gravity) where by each side pushes and pulls in balance so that they actually generate energy.

    Like for eample, have a "Ds" particle bolted to the top of a room, and drop a second "Ds" particle directly from it, it would be pulled by gravity until the point where the strange inverted force gets strong enough to pull it back up. As it goes back up, that force diminshes, and then gravity takes over again, etc.

    • Re:Perpetual motion, here I come... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hmm...I really can't tell if you are joking or not. This is never going to happen due to the scale at which these forces work. The strong nuclear force prevents free quarks from being observed. This is called confinement and is due to quantum chromodynamics (QCD). If a enough energy is pumped into a particle composed of quarks, the energy enevtually goes into creating a new quark pair, therefore satifying confinement (no free quarks). The amount of energy to do this is staggering. Think GeV or higher

    • You ***CAN*** do this....

      Take a mass and hang it from a spring. This will represent "The (strong) Force". Gravity, as always, will work. You then pull the mass to the floor. The spring pulls it up. When it reaches the ceiling, gravity will pull it down.

      All you have to do to make this into perpetual motion is to suck all of the gas from the room, and find a new type of spring with no internal friction losses. It will bounce forever!

      Now, getting energy from such a system would cause it to slow dow

  • What idiot got to name this particle??? I was expecting a name a bit less ... dumb. It should at least be named after someone's dog or something; not just two arbitrary letters randomly picked form the alphabet.

    I suggest it be renamed the "code-red" particle (as i am drinking that now); the "twinkie" particle; or perhaps even the "Jugs, the magazine for men" particle...

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