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Science

Pentaquarks 36

jafuser writes "Physicists are quite confident that they have discovered a new baryonic state called a 'pentaquark' which is a particle composed of *five* quarks (4 quarks and one anti-quark to be precise). Up until now, quarks were only observed to come together in groups of two (mesons) or three (baryons). If you still haven't gotten comfortable with knowing your leptons from your hadrons, I suggest clicking through an excellent site at Particle Adventure."
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Pentaquarks

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  • by Atario ( 673917 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @06:57PM (#6335342) Homepage
    I suppose that's what happens when the last epsiode of Star Trek: The Next Generation collides with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  • by joto ( 134244 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @07:44PM (#6335661)
    They have an explanation for the general public, the general scientist, and the physicist. Obviously, they care about accurate science reporting.
  • by Bob Bitchen ( 147646 ) on Monday June 30, 2003 @08:58PM (#6336091) Homepage
    It's interesting to note that this form of reverse engineering is revered and those practicing are held in high esteem (usually) but that more meso-scale reverse engineering is considered lowly and usually is illegal. Ponder that....
  • Color? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 30, 2003 @09:22PM (#6336197)
    I wonder what the color makeup of the pentaquark is. As I undestand it, for mesons it's red/anti-red, blue/anti-blue, or green/anti-green. For baryons it's red/blue/green or anti-red/anti-blue/anti-green. What do you do for five?
    • Re:Color? (Score:3, Informative)

      I wonder what the color makeup of the pentaquark is. As I undestand it, for mesons it's red/anti-red, blue/anti-blue, or green/anti-green. For baryons it's red/blue/green or anti-red/anti-blue/anti-green. What do you do for five?

      RGB plus R!R or G!G or B!B.

      Think of this as a merged baryon and meson.
      • Think of this as a merged baryon and meson.

        No. They specifically said that the merged version would have different properties.
        • Re:Color? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @12:18AM (#6337079)
          Think of this as a merged baryon and meson.

          No. They specifically said that the merged version would have different properties.

          "Merged" != "Bound".

          A bound pair would not be a distinct particle (it would be two co-orbiting, which would have different particles). A pentaquark can be thought of has a merger of the two particles, containing the constituents of both but having its own energy structure.

          List of the constituents is the same. Hence, my example.
          • (it would be two co-orbiting, which would have different particles) ...different properties. That's what I get for slashdotting at silly-o'clock in the morning.
          • With quarks it's difficult to say that there would be a difference between "merged" and "bound" - the strong force is very weird (it's confining, for one: it gets stronger the farther away the particle gets, and weaker the closer in the particles are) and so it's really quite difficult to distinctly say "yes, this is a distinct 5-quark 'merged' particle" or "no, this is a meson-baryon molecule where the quark-antiquark orbit the other three color-singlet quarks".

            After all, no matter what, it's NOT a distin
  • 'general public' (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    here is the version of the press release they have for the general public:

    Is it just me, or does the assumed sophistication of the target audience make anybody else really scared?

    The pentaquark -- A description for the general public

    If you're reading this web page, then you likely know that atoms are the basic building blocks of matter, and that atoms are made up of electrons swarming around a tiny nucleus. More than 99.9% of the mass of everyday objects is contained within the nucleus of the atoms. No

  • Well let's see... 2,3,5... maybe the next one will be 7 quarks. Just a crappy guess.
  • So what's a ... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Muad'Dave ( 255648 )

    dectector? Look at the image on the first linked page.

  • I thought this was the term for a heat sink/overclock bummer

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