Matter, Anti-Matter, and a New Subatomic Particle? 175
sciencehabit writes "Physicists may have finally figured out why the universe contains more matter than antimatter. The key lies in a flaw in the relationship between the two and a potentially new subatomic particle. 'Other researchers, however, say the results, published today in Nature, should be interpreted cautiously. It could all be an effect produced by run-of-the-mill particles'."
Dark Matter? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Doctors once thought that wellness and illness within the human body were caused by the balance between the body's four humors: Yellow Bile, Black Bile, Phlegm, and Blood.
Obviously, there is MUCH more to it than that. It is no different with this.
The actual answers to the universe and its mass-energy
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Thunderbolts of the Gods:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4773590301316220374 [google.com]
About mythology, but also about the electrical universe and plasma cosmology.
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Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:5, Funny)
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I was thinking more on the lines of who we voted into office and our reality TV shows, but to each his own.
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Generally we evaluate theories from the past based on our current theories, and also on our understanding of what those theories actually were. Usually both stances are fatally flawed.
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Right. It would be more precise to say that he believed that quantum mechanics was incomplete, rather than wrong.
You can accept 100% of quantum mechanics, accept the results of every experiment, do all the calculations, use it as working model for predictions etc. etc. while also believing that there is something more going on.
Except that the specific "something more" that he suggested [wikipedia.org] turned out n
Physics and metaphysics (Score:2)
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Dark Matter? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since we can't currently *see it* I'll also agree that because it is currently not directly observable it is therefore "Dark" and made of "Matter".
My point is; that it to call it "Dark Matter" and to be done with it leaves things rather vague. Science rarely is so succinct and simple.
Black Hole material is also "Dark Matter" as it too cannot be directly observed.
Enough effects and gravity of the Black Holes' "Dark Matter" exists on the non-dark observable matter nearby to their hypothesized locations to convince scientists that Black Holes do exist (in addition to the math working out decently).
Stephen Hawking is THE MAN.
For all we know, the mysterious "Dark Matter" could really be just a very dense repository of all of the discarded fruitcakes from around the universe. We don't know.
Scientists have an idea about what "Dark Matter" might be, and likely SOME of that will be correct, but chances are that a majority of it will be wrong. It will actually turn out to be something more complicated than 'matter we just can't observe' so it is now therefore decreed to be henceforth called "Dark Matter".
I believe that atoms once were the smallest particles known, that changed. So will this. It may turn out to just be star ash, but Maybe not.
It could be thousands of things or types of matter, likely even stuff that is NOT dark.
If we can make a B2 bomber into "Dark Matter" from the POV of a man by using it's stealth features and electromagnetic radiation adsorbing coverings, maybe there's just plain ordinary matter out there that is rather cold and covered with some cosmic stealth paint.
The math says it exists and there is enough circumstantial evidence that "something" is there. I doubt it has some mystical properties that make it invisible. There are other dimensions in the universe that mathematics has proven exist, maybe being close or intersecting in some way with matter in those other dimensions is actually causing the "Dark Matter" effect.
I hope to live long enough to see "Dark Matter" become as archaic a term as the body's 4 humors are now from my original analogy.
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At least that way, we know what we don't understand.
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Fact is, in science you are never "done with it". So there's nothing wrong with a general classification like "dark matter", because you can take for granted that in the future it will be dissected into more specific kinds of matter.
Just as we first had "atoms" and then discovered sub-atomic particles.
Or... (Score:2)
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Re:Dark Matter? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it couldn't. One thing that is definitely known is that the dark matter is not made of regular atoms (baryonic matter). Baryonic matter is known to comprise no more than about four percent of the total density of stuff in the universe, versus about 25 percent for dark matter. If the universe were 25 percent baryonic, all sorts of measurements would come out differently than they do:
(1) The primordial abundance of elements, which is observed to be about 76 percent hydrogen and 24 percent helium and a trace of lithium, would be very different. See here [wikipedia.org]
(2) The signatures of acoustic oscillations in the Cosmic Micrwave Background would be much larger than they are observed to be. See here [wikipedia.org]
(3) Any extra baryons would show up in the hot gas between galaxies in large clusters, which is very accurately measured by X-ray satellites. See here [nasa.gov].
(4) Dark matter consisting of small condensed objects like Jupiter-sized planets would show up in gravitational microlensing [wikipedia.org] surveys. They don't.
We don't know what dark matter is, but we sure as hell know what it's not, and it is not ordinary matter that just happens to be dark. There are multiple, independent lines of evidence which support this conclusion.
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Although I think the original point that dark matter cannot be attributed to black holes is valid, can baryonic conservation within a black hole really be assumed? If I put 10^40 baryons in a black hole, should I expect to get 10^40 back out via Hawking radiation? What does this say about the information content of a black hole? (I don't know much about these topics, so I'd really like to know.)
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Another blatantly obvious non-spatial dimension is color. Basically a dimension is anything that can form a consistent ordering and is measurable. Such dimensions are often spatialized for display purposes, just as spatial dimensions are often transformed into non-spatial dimensions. (Consider a globe that
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As was quantum mechanics at one point. The equations do want to balance, one way or the other. The thing that balances them is by definition strange and wonderful.
Doctors once thought that wellness and illness within the human body were caused by the balance between the body's four humors: Yellow Bile, Blac
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It's a particle so it just changes it's state to "Not So Dark Matter".
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Experimental methods for confirming dark matter seem to have failed (WIMPS) so we're just left with observations that don't match our theory. Go figure.
Having said that, Dark matter is at least slightly more plausible than dark energy, and string theory makes them both look like fundamental tenets
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But it comes in several different flavors. If the big bang theories are correct, most of the missing mass of the universe can't be baryonic. (I.e., it can't be built around protons and neutrons.) In that case what is it? Some of it's massive neutrinos...but not all. It can't be electrons, as there aren't any more electrons
Re:Dark Matter? P.S. (Score:2)
If there were more electrons than protons, their charge would need to be balanced by positrons, so we'd see gamma ray peaks indicating annihilation of electrons by positrons. We don't.
OTOH, this is based on other theories. E.g. it presumes that the net charge is neutral. There are lots of good reasons to believe this, but a direct proof is obviously impossible. (We couldn't even do a direct proof that your hand was neutral...but there are lots of good reas
Number Fudging, not only for tax fraud (Score:2, Funny)
What would be really impressive.. (Score:2)
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Though i guess most physicists don't study jewish and/or indian spirituality.
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The obvious joke (Score:2)
So. We now have the ancient joke out of the way, let's start the discussion.
Well if it does not matter (Score:2)
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QED.
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Re:A flaw? A FLAW? (Score:5, Funny)
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Hawking radiation. matter isn't destroyed entirely, it still retains properties that must be sonserved, mass, charge and spin for example. blackholes also "shine" via hawking radiation which small blackholes emit more radiation than larger ones do via this mechanism. in the end the blackholes appears to "explode" from an outside observer's viewpoint as the radiation release is inversely porportional to the third power of the mass of the black holes.
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A flaw in our understanding of it. Quit making flames for the sake of making flames because there is no basis in the article for what you said. You'll look less stupid in the process.
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Not a flaw...a design feature (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually, matter + antimatter = energy.
Energy, if it's 'dense' enough (like what they're trying to accomplish in the LHC), will 'condense' to form matter or antimatter.
All that's needed is a very slight tendency toward that condensation to be biased for a universe full of one or the other after a big bang.
Think about the scenario:
Matter and antimatter start 'condensing' out of the early big bang. The newly formed particles collide
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All that's needed is a very slight tendency toward that condensation to be biased for a universe full of one or the other after a big bang.
That is not quite all that is needed. There are three conditions for matter dominance (called the Sakharov conditions) required in the Big Bang:
The 'flaw' might not even be needed. If it could be shown that the presence of matter near a high concentration of energy would affect the condensation of that energy in such a way as to bias it toward condensing into matter...
That is precisely what the flaw is so you do need it. Yo
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Microsoft Physics?
(sorry, couldn't pass that one up.)
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I hope not. I would hate for us to turn on the LHC only to discover the Universe has a blue screen of death.
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Since the solar wind does not do this with the galaxy, nor do any other stars within the galaxy, we can assume that our galaxy is 100% matter. Since none of the galaxies in the local cluster produce gamma rays with the sparse gas in between them then these too must be all matter. Furth
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However, my understanding of it is that there's a rather large asymmetry between the amount of energy needed to create a matter particle vs. a much higher number to create an antimatter particle. Not the 1% they were talking about, but something like an order of magnitude more free energy. Hence the free energy ended up mainly creating bosonic matter.
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Actually I would say that nature exhibits broken symmetries nearly everywhere. The matter/anti-matter asymmetry is almost perfect (it is a VERY small effect) but slightly broken. The mass of fundamental particles may well be the result of a broken symmetry. Weak interactions break a symmetry called parity (inversion of all space axes) maximally. There may also be a symmetry between matter and force, sup
Run-of-the-mill particles? (Score:5, Funny)
Would that be, um, flour? The universe is held together by flour?
(Thought I should attempt to reflect the Luddite perspective. Everybody else commenting on this post is being far too intelligent and rational.)
Duct Tape (Score:2)
The universe is held together by Duct Tape. Except air conditioning ducts, because of the enormous quantities of Schrodinger particles emitted by shed cat hair. You need to use metallized tape to hold those together. Heavy-metallized if you have more than two cats.
Exceptionally Simply Theory of Everything (Score:4, Interesting)
Exceptionally SIMPLE (Score:2)
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Garrett's theory does contain some new particles, which might be used to explain the effects described in TFA. What is required is new CP violation. I believe Garrett's theory contains higgs particles which could have CP violating interactions, but this is far from clear after re-reading his paper. As far as I know no one has done a detailed study using Garrett's theory. So far Garrett's paper has not been cited by any real particle physics (phenomenology) studies, so one cannot say for sure yet.
After
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Was it really just a flash in the pan? Is there any hope that Lisi's theory will prove to have any relevence in modern physics?
Re:Exceptionally Simply Theory of Everything (Score:5, Informative)
Very good question...
I do work on theoretical particle physics at CERN, so I would be the kind of person to take Garrett's paper and make predictions for colliders/astrophysics from it. (and hence, find methods to prove/disprove it) I'm not currently working on his theory, nor do I know of anyone who is. I only looked carefully at his paper when I posted the above comment (though I knew about it). I previously understood that he claimed the Standard Model was contained inside E8. If that is true then there are essentially no new predictions, just an interesting coincidence. However I see now that his theory is not the Standard Model, but a SU(2)xSU(2)xSU(4) Pati-Salam model. This implies several new particles that could be seen at the LHC. Garrett claims several things which are not totally justified and require some more calculations to find out (for instance...that the gauge groups unify).
The Pati-Salem model is well-studied (though not currently -- it was popular in the 80's). It is often known as a "leptoquark" theory. However I do not see in Garrett's paper the particle content necessary to make leptoquarks, nor the particles (higgses) to break the SU(2)xSU(2)xSU(4) to the Standard Model's U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3).
I think the problem is sociological. Garrett made a big splash in the gravity community, but I haven't heard a peep from any of my colleagues in particle physics. I will ask around at CERN next week. I know of no good reason why people are not studying it more carefully and making predictions (though, I'm sure Garrett is, but his background is gravity, not colliders).
Flash in the pan? Lots of stuff in the popular press is. For instance TFA is probably an effect of non-gaussian errors, but by making a splashy title they've gotten themselves a Science magazine article. Garrett got his flash partly because of his non-traditional lifestyle. Moral of the story is that the things that appear in the popular press are usually "hero" or "eureka!" stories. But science is full of neither heroes nor daily eureka's. I could complain further about the state of science reporting...
Keep in mind that there are literally hundreds of theories capable of explaining TFA (assuming it's not a statistical fluctuation), and you won't hear about them in the popular press because they're not sexy and hard to explain. For instance, a 4th generation of quarks or a complex higgs sector. Garrett's theory might be one of them, we don't know yet. We don't usually explain these theories to the public because explaining 100 different complicated theories, 99 of which must be wrong...is probably a waste of the public's time. Instead, we'll turn on the LHC this year, which will undoubtedly generate tons of popular articles, and hopefully at least one mostly-correct theory. ;)
-- Bob
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I only knew about Lisi's paper because it was posted on Slashdot; I do consider all of the lifestyle stuff to be completely superfluous and don't base my judgment on the paper on those things (however considering how sour the taste is in my mouth whenever I hear about string theory, the fact that he is very much outside the 'establishment' does have its appeal). Also there was some flack posted about his paper because it was titled 'An Except
Re:Exceptionally Simply Theory of Everything (Score:4, Informative)
Glad I could be of service. BTW I think your "periodic table" comment is an apt description of the situation. I think what's missing is dynamics.
Rather than google, if you want to keep up with Lisi (or anyone else's) papers, I suggest the SLAC Spires database. For instance, this is Lisi's "exceptionally simple" paper [stanford.edu]. Click on the "Cited..." to get a list of citations. This is updated daily from journal sources, and more importantly arxiv.org. This database generally has topics of relevance to high-energy physics, astrophysics, and gravity. Another good database is the NASA Astrophysical Data Service [harvard.edu], here's Lisi's "exceptionally simple" paper [harvard.edu] on ADS. I warn you however, everything retrieved this way will be technical in nature.
This is what the web was invented for, by the physics community at CERN no less, and now days all our papers are freely available before they are sent to journals, and the public is welcome to read them. Indeed, I despise the "ivory tower" perception and think we are much better off by having outsiders look at what we're doing. I just with the popular press would wrap their heads around the idea of citing primary sources with a hyperlink....but I digress.
-- Bob
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The physics community is pretty divided on whether blogs and such are a useful communications medium. Problem is, that physics requires sitting down and thinking hard about something for quite a long time (accompanied by some calculation) to reach a conclusion. Blogs usually contain no more than an hour's thought by each poster on a given subject. And, 1000 posters does not 1000 hours of concentrated thought make.
I'm relatively neutral on the subject, blogs on these kinds of topics I think are at best
A Non-Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Astronomers noticed an anomaly. They dreamed up dark matter to explain it. Actually, they dredged it up -- the concept had been applied to other phenomena and always found not to be involved if it even existed. Then they set about looking for other signs that matched the theory, and in a fit of circular reasoning claimed it supported the hypothesized existence of the dream-stuff. Now that they're getting away with it so well that The Teaching Company even has a 12 hour lecture series on it for sale, it's encouraging others to invent all manner of invisible widgetons to blame it on, because hey, anyone can do science, but how many people get to dream up something imaginary and get taken seriously? Dream-stuff is sexy even if it doesn't exist. It gets you noticed. It gets you published, and if the publication is more a question than an answer, well, it's invisible or massless or some other quality which makes it unseen by everyone except you and your imagination.
I'm not buying until I see how they dismiss the previous workable theory based on entirely known quanta that predates this supposed discovery by 10 years.
...more like a non-result (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem the strong force is that it is so strong at low energy that our normal technique to calculate what is going on (called perturbation theory) does not work because, rather than small perturbations, the strong interaction causes huge changes. This means that theorists have to make approximations in order to calculate anything and so their results may well just show a flaw in their assumptions rather than a flaw in our understanding of physics.
An excellent example of this was with my grad student experiment which was also measuring CP violation but with kaons. Before our measurement the theorists were saying that there was absolutely no way at all they could have a certain parameter (epsilon'/epsilon) to have a value greater than 1e-3 and it would likely be a lot lower. So, we measured it at around 1.7e-3 and, lo and behold, the theorists adjusted their models and suddenly it was in agreement with theory.
So while this might be an indication of something new I am not yet convinces that it is anything more than an incorrect assumption in a QCD calculation somewhere. Such calculations are fantastically difficult and while in this case there are things that will make it easier, it is not yet convincing evidence.
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Re:A Non-Surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok I'll one-up you: I attended a lecture this week, on this particular paper, at CERN.
Because in addition to the expected effects, TFA claims NEW effects not explainable by the standard theory. So, we need a new rabbit. The original theory is NOT sufficient if their claims are not due to statistical fluctuations.
That's a pretty darn good description of the scientific method, minus your disparaging adjectives.
Yes anyone can do science. That's the point. Observe, Hypothesize, test. Proving/disproving your dreamed up theory is hard work, and that's what we do. If their observations were explainable by the current theory, they would have been shot down in 5 seconds by their colleagues, in a seminar, or in the journals, and you wouldn't be reading about it in Science magazine. Science is incredibly adversarial. We're all trying to kill each other's theories.
FYI, it's generally a bad assumption that some piece of science you read about in the press has a simple explanation, and the scientists are idiots.
-- Bob
Same old science... (Score:4, Funny)
then create.newParticle();
Else
publish.newTheory();
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Need a better class library there... (Score:2)
if (theory != sense)
theory.createNewParticle(BS)
else
theory.publishNewArticle(BS);
Why carry around variables for "theory" and "publish"? Don't they belong together?
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Another flaw in the paradism (Score:3, Insightful)
Its the same problem with particle physics. Using the same logic, having to find more and more particles to satisfy some mathematical model makes it pretty obvious that you are in the wrong paradism. People will claim that we have proof that this or that particle exists, but what is a particle to begin with? What exactly is an electron or proton? We have no idea YET.
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Why do you think it is that pi often is needed in calculations? Because someone is using the wrong coordinate system.
So what coordinate system should I be "using" to find the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter? What is e^(pi*sqrt(-1)) in this coordinate system? Can you perhaps give an example of a situation in which pi is eliminated in a non-trivial calculation by choosing a more correct coordinate system, and explain why is it so bad to have a pi appear in a calculation in the first place?
Re:Another flaw in the paradigm (Score:2)
There is definitely at least one mathematical system where pi has a precise value that could be used as the base unit in geometries. In such a system, the area of a circle would be knowable with the same absolute precision as the area of a square.
Unfortunately, the human mind is not constructed in a way that can comprehend such a system. It would always appear to us to be based on something that is inherently irrational, no matter how it is presented. That is, in fact, one of the defining limitations of
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Shouldn't that be... (Score:2)
Baryogenesis (Score:2, Interesting)
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my screen started spraying Nerdion particles at me when I read your comment
Re:Star Trekkin' Across the Universe (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Star Trekkin' Across the Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
For example? Can you list some of these please?
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> Except in real life, they don't really invent a new particle too often, they just make one up and name it after something dumb like themselves and hope at some point it's proven that it's real, which the majority of the time it's not.
For example? Can you list some of these please?
I read a book called the Physics of Star Trek, it came out before TNG ended. The guy who wrote it said that they actually used terms circling throughout communities, albeit incorrectly at times. I remember he appreciated that they at least took a stab at it. That said, though, the poster you're replying to may have been referring to Cochrane. He was the fabled inventor of the warp drive and they used his name as a measure of energy, if I recall.
... that's vague, sorry folks. I don't remember much
But
Re:Star Trekkin' Across the Universe (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia has a concise and complete list of hypothetical and theoretical particles:
Hypothetical particles [wikipedia.org]
Photino - superpartner ofthe photon [wikipedia.org]
Gluino - superpartner ofthe gluon [wikipedia.org]
Gravitino - superpartner of the graviton [wikipedia.org]
Neutralino - superpartner of other neutral particles [wikipedia.org]
Charginos - partners of charged bosons [wikipedia.org]
Sterile Neutrinos - needed to explain LSND results [wikipedia.org]
Sleptons [wikipedia.org] and Squarks - supersymmetric partners of fermions [wikipedia.org]
Tachyons - particles which travel faster than light [wikipedia.org]
Higgs Boson - the origin of mass [wikipedia.org]
Graviton - mediates gravity [wikipedia.org]
Preons - substructure for quarks and leptons [wikipedia.org]
Graviscalar [wikipedia.org] and Graviphoton [wikipedia.org]
Axion - Peccei-Quinn theory to solve the strong CP problem [wikipedia.org]
Axino and Saxion - form together with the axion a supermultiplet [wikipedia.org]
Supermultiplet - supersymmetric extensions of Peccei-Quinn theory [wikipedia.org]
Branon [wikipedia.org]
X and Y bosons - predicted by GUT theory [wikipedia.org]
Magnetic photon [wikipedia.org]
Majoron - predicted to understand neutrino masses [wikipedia.org]
These are all theories. Maybe there should be an X-prize for someone who can come up with a desktop experiment that can prove or disprove one or more of these theories.
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Possibly the Branon one is, but I've never heard of that. None of the others seem to be named after physicists.
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Not everyone believes mainstream physics is correct. It's a decent enough MODEL, but it's not very likely that it REALLY explains what is actually going on.
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If we do just find the Higgs particle from the LHC, and nothing more, then that is pretty much the worst case situation. We know that there are problems with the standard model, but nobody knows for sure what part is wrong, and how it is wrong exactly. Everyone is hoping that the LHC will give results that aren't predicted by the standard model, to give us a better understanding in where and why it is wrong exactly.
Hey! (Score:2)
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Re:Star Trekkin' Across the Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
In particle physics right now, the problem is that we have a model, the Standard Model, which we know is incomplete (doesnt include gravity for a start) but it more or less explains every experimental result we've every produced (neutrino masses are argueably accommodated with some small extension). We lack experimental data to even give us a hint what might be beyond it and this has been the case for a long time. So theory has had nothing to do but invent crazy models and wait for the experimentalists to catch up (which we hope to do this year, it'll be exciting). Hence why you see a lot of crazy models around with zero experimental evidence supporting them.
The other problem is that we are all tired and sick of the Standard Model, we want to know whats beyond it so people really really want to find evidence of new physics beyond it. This means that people are quick to jump on small effects and claim its new physics which is probably where you are coming from. Usually they get shouted down by the rest of the quickly community but it does happen with alarming regularity (see pentaquarks, 160 GeV Higgs last year as two recent examples). Whats worse is that for something like the result in the article, its an indirect evidence in a QCD environment which basically means there are so many effects going on, this could easily be explained by the Standard Model. So basically nobody believes it for now. QCD is what binds mesons (such as the B+,B0) and baryons (such as the proton and neutron) together. Unfortunately, we cant solve it right now, except for high energies so often there are many effects which later turn out just because we make a mistake in our approximations in order to get a solution. Compare with the CDF Run I jet excess which later just turned out because QCD effects werent being taken into account. This is the reason that physicists wont believe anything which says new physics right now unless theres a clear unambiguous peak in a mass spectrum, ie make and detect a new particle in your detector. Now this could be genuine evidence but we've all been here before so I think the community takes the feeling that we'll wait for more supporting evidence and for people to offer up alternative explanations before we say its new physics.
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No citations in 4 years is usually a damn good signal of a crackpot paper. Also, it's in the math section of the arxiv. Great way to get physicists to notice it... It seems to contain a lot of copies of the formulas you'd find in the first chapter of most grad level physics texts, and not much else.
-- Bob
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What makes you think we're made of positive matter?
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If there was antimatter floating in the universe we would see it via the annihilation of anti-matter with matter where they meet. In particular, an electron and positron annihilate into two gamma rays of a very specific energy, and we have space telescopes looking in that energy range. We just don't see them. You could postulate antimatter stars/galaxies, but their solar wind would run into other stars in the interstellar medium, and create these gamma rays along a boundary plane between them. We just d
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Re:Matter vs. Anti-matter (Score:5, Informative)