Fermilab Discovers Untheorized Particle 217
alevy writes to mention that scientists at Fermilab have detected a new, completely untheorized particle. Seems like Fermi has been a hotbed of activity lately with the discovery of a new single top quark and narrowing the gap twice on the Higgs Boson particle. "The Y(4140) particle is the newest member of a family of particles of similar unusual characteristics observed in the last several years by experimenters at Fermilab's Tevatron as well as at KEK and the SLAC lab, which operates at Stanford through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. 'We congratulate CDF on the first evidence for a new unexpected Y state that decays to J/psi and phi,' said Japanese physicist Masanori Yamauchi, a KEK spokesperson. 'This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data.'"
whew... untheorized... (Score:5, Funny)
At first I read it as "unauthorized" and thought someone will have a lot of explaining to do.
Re:whew... untheorized... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn. Now I'll have to update my authorized_particles file!
Re:whew... untheorized... (Score:4, Funny)
Damn. Now I'll have to update my authorized_particles file [slashdot.org]!
Kevin Rudd [pm.gov.au] is that you?
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Damn. Now I'll have to update my authorized_particles file!
More importantly does Gordon Freeman know about this?
Re:whew... untheorized... (Score:5, Funny)
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I thought, "No wonder this is the first time it's been viewed".
*please don't kill me. It's a joke (although I do prefer Xvid).
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You mean x264, don't you?
XviD/DivX: The MP3 of video codecs.
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It might be both. It IS only a few days after St. Patrick's!
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May not have found the God Particle but we found the Devil Particle.
Re:whew... untheorized... (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Jesus,
You have to be happy with the 2 authorized books I've put out.
Stop making up unauthorized stuff to confuse my creation.
-Yaweh
Re:whew... untheorized... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:whew... untheorized... (Score:5, Funny)
Not so fast. The scientists at Fermilab might still face a heavy fine for their crime [nobelprize.org].
I quote Willis Lamb, Nobel Laureate,
"The finder of a new elementary particle used to be rewarded by a Nobel Prize, but such a discovery now ought to be punished by a $10,000 fine."
And that was in the 50s, so with the inflation, you can only guess how heavy the fine would be now.
Re:whew... untheorized... (Score:5, Informative)
And that was in the 50s, so with the inflation, you can only guess how heavy the fine would be now.
$88,046.89
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=10000&year1=1950&year2=2009 [bls.gov]
Just sayin.
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Where, pray tell, is parent's Informative mod, mmm?
Oh, and
an exotic hadron containing charm quarks.
Mmmm... Lucky Charms...
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Yeah, you just sayin' you have too much time on your hands!
Apparently I do as well. Stupid slow compile.
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They should've saved this for April 1st.
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"A Very Merry Unauthorized Higgs-Boson Particle"?
Authorized (Score:5, Funny)
Uh... I authorized it. Problem?
(Signed) H.B.
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I'm having a problem observing you. You appear to be a bovine particle.
Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Funny)
Call it the Hope particle.
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Funny)
If it's related to the quark, it should be called Rom or Nog.
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I think Moogie would be cooler . . .
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Well, that depends. Could you build a nanotech Moog from them?
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Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Funny)
If it's related to the quark, it should be called Rom or Nog.
Hmm. If I was a particle physicist, I'd be leaning more toward "nagus".
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But how, exactly, IS the Grand Nagus related to Quark? ....and is there any profit in it?
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Call it the Hope particle.
call it Black Hole [nytimes.com] particle
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno. It might cause a reunion of The Village People, if they can figure out a way to handle the extra syllable.
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno. It might cause a reunion of The Village People, if they can figure out a way to handle the extra syllable.
"Y (Gross times Ten)"
Where's the extra syllable?
Great point - educate, don't market (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that sometimes you have to "sell" something to the masses, but sometimes it's better to take the long way around and instead of selling it to them, work on educating them. There's a subtle difference. Marketing is jazzing up the name is marketing. Explaining it's significance and telling you what we could do with that knowledge is education. Education has a longer term significance, and encourages the masses in general to learn more. In the US the populace is getting less and less interested in becoming educated because we are too concerned with marketing and sound bites and what sounds good without explaining what is good.
Besides, the words Calculus, Gravity, Physics, and neuropsychology weren't picked for their marketability.
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:5, Funny)
Nobody is going to interrupt the guys working on Y(1440).
That's because Y(1440) is a particle of no real consequence... not like Y(1441), the only unknown particle capable of stabilizing a miniature black hole long enough for it to grow by 'eating' the nearby matter.
If they had discovered that particle your work
would surely
be inter
upt
te
d
.
Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing (Score:4, Insightful)
Or name it Y4w36
hmm, maybe that wont work so well.
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Call it "The Jesus Particle" and southern senators will finally vote for science funding.
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We congratulate CDF on the first evidence for a new unexpected Y state that decays to J/psi and phi
I'm sorry but this is the THIRD time I've heard someone say this today alone!
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given that it was only detected through decay products, i second this motion.
What does this say about the search for the Higgs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does the creation of a previously unanticipated particle imply issues with current theory significant enough to make the LHC experiment less useful? Even if we find the Higgs, the current model will still be insufficient.
Re:What does this say about the search for the Hig (Score:5, Informative)
We _know_ that the current theory is insufficient. It doesn't explain gravity, for one thing.
LHC will allow to test some alternative theories, so we really need it. Also, we still need to check the existance of Higgs.
Re:What does this say about the search for the Hig (Score:4, Insightful)
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I know people are puzzled by it, but once again, the Pioneer anomaly does not prove that "we don't understand gravity". We don't understand the Pioneer anomaly. Whether it has to do with gravity is another question.
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At least, that's the guess. If they're wrong, that would be much more interesting!
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charmed quarks
They are a type of quark named "charm quarks".
They are not a quark that has been bewitched.
Re:What does this say about the search for the Hig (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing...it is QCD (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because quarks bind via the strong force and while we understand the principles behind this force what they imply is that at low energy the basic mathematical method typically used (perturbation theory) does not work because the force becomes so strong. Unfortunately nobody has found a real way around this so approximations are used and, not being fundamentally correct, these sometimes get things wrong.
As a particle experimentalist it looks like there are two promissing approaches to really solve this properly. The first is using huge, massively parallel computers and a technique called lattice QCD where you divide space and time into points and solve numerically. The computing power has just recently begun to be enough to start producing useful, believable results. the other technique is a result of string theory that has shown that a really strong force like QCD is mathematically equivalent to a weak force (which can be calculated) but in more than 3+1 dimensions....so there might actually be something useful coming out of string theory sooner than anticipated!
Naming time? (Score:5, Funny)
Quote (Score:3, Funny)
"This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data."
That was my yearbook quote!
new particles? (Score:2, Interesting)
or it may be an error, like this other newly discovered untheorized particle may be:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/looking-for-exotic-matter.ars [arstechnica.com]
Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
If we already had it all figured out, it would get pretty boring very quickly.
Sometimes it is reassuring to know that there might be possibilities that we not yet aware of.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
"If we already had it all figured out, it would get pretty boring very quickly."
Indeed. One of the great attractions of science in general is the fact that there is always something new to learn. The day you make your first discovery, solve a problem that has stumped other researchers for years, those are the days you live for.
Other times, its the whole "that's funny" thing where you simply notice something odd and it leads you in a completely unanticipated direction. The primary difference between people who go into science and those who avoid it is that scientists aren't worried by being proven wrong about something (at least they shouldn't be) since it is probable that what you discovered is way more interesting. There are also those people who like to think they know everything that is ever going to be known and who will shun and deny knowledge that contradicts their beliefs. They just love when scientists find something they didn't expect because they think it means science is wrong. Fact is, science is always wrong about something and admitting being wrong is the first step to learning more. If you can't admit you're wrong, well, you're learning nothing and just consuming resources until something else consumes you. But I'm sure Jebus loves you so don't feel too bad......
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Shun the non-believer. Shun. Shuuuuuuuuuu-nnnnn. Nnn.
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*everyone: excludes muslims, jews, atheists, protestants, people who work on sundays, gays, lesbians, people with aids, and people.
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I like one of the comments on the article, something about over 99% of all scientists in human history are still alive today. Makes sense to me.
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Very true, odd that time also corresponds to the Sun circling earth, earth was still flat, and the outer edges of 'world' maps noted: there be dragons here.
Yes, thankfully that time has passed.
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Action: religious wackjobs spend several centuries persecuting scientists, killing some and making the lives of others hellish, but finally calm down to the point of merely denying facts that contradict their beliefs and only occasionally shooting doctors or other representatives of science.
Reaction: many scientists become anti-religious.
For some reason I don't understand, you seem to be blaming the scientists here.
LHC (Score:4, Funny)
damn it, after all those years and all that viagra I thought I finally had my Hadron!
Re:LHC (Score:4, Funny)
Just so you know, if your hadron doesn't decay within four hours, you're supposed to call your doctor.
But, but Photons ARE slowed down (Score:2)
Yes, I did skim through the articles.
At several places they claim that photons are weightless as they are not affected by the Higgs field. But, but Photons ARE slowed down, in many circumstances. What am I missing here? Apart from Physics 101 and beyond...
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Nope. You're wrong, photons ARE NOT slowed down, ever (well, except for Casimir vacuum and virtual photons).
Photons traveling in material are constantly adsorbed and re-emitted, that's why they appear to travel slower.
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They won't be weightless, they'll be massless.
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Only in metric, in good old American it'll be weightless like it oughtta be.
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Photons don't slow, they redshift. You're probably thinking of the speed of light in non-vacuum.
Just thinking about it... (Score:2)
Wait a minute... (Score:2)
Jeez. Small world.
they found it (Score:2)
So that's where my right sock is
Holes in the Standard Model (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this the second major hole in the Standard Model? I know neutrinos having mass is sort of a hole. But this sounds like a much larger break with the Standard Model. Anyone following this have more information?
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IANAPP, but It's not really a hole, as far as I understand it. It's also not technically a "particle". It's really just a configuration that certain quarks can combine in, which no one expected. Which, granted, is a particle in the way a proton or neutron is a particle. But it's not truly fundamental.
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IANAPP
While the meaning of this is obvious, i had never encountered it before, and did a quick google to see how widespread it was and maybe find an approximate age.
However, this worthy nerdly pursuit was cut off upon seeing the second Google hit is for some poor bastard on Facebook named Ian App. I'm going to go back to work now before my coworkers come over to see what all the noise is about :P
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That makes me want to name my next kid "Ian Al".
Nevermind (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it is a processing anomaly. (Score:2)
It seems to me using computers to process oodles of information could introduce stuff that really isn't there. Like random number generators of the past that actually show patterns when graphed three dimensionally or two dimensionally.
Maybe it is just bug in the CPU's of said systems manifesting regularly when analyzing the data sets...
The regularity would "seem" like a new particle.
Just a thought....
Intriguing! (Score:2)
Just like Data used to say.
Some of the very best science has come from somebody looking over data, scratching their head and thinking, "That's funny..."
...laura
Charm Quarks.. (Score:5, Funny)
They're magically suspicious.
Also they should rename the SciFi channel to Psi Phi.
Good! (Score:2)
Good, David wins again.
The most exciting words in science (Score:5, Interesting)
As Isaac Asimov wrote, the most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I've found it!), but "That's funny...".
This is ridiculous ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice timing... (Score:2)
according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 20th is the anniversary of the first publication of Einstein's theory of relativity.
Idiots! (Score:2)
No wonder they haven't found that bosun that Higgs lost if they keep getting sidetracked by inconsequential crap all the time. 'I'm gonna look for the bosun right after i finish tidying my cd shelf!', 'Oh, I just have to watch Dr Who on the TV first', they are no better than kids. GROW UP!!
Favorite Fermilab particle name (Score:5, Funny)
The Ooops-Leon, which was "discovered" due to an error in reading the data. It was going to be called the upsilon. Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman was the lead on the experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oops-Leon [wikipedia.org]
Over my head. (Score:2, Funny)
and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks.
And that, my friends, is why I'll stick to software engineering, thank you very much.
Re:Over my head. (Score:4, Funny)
And that, my friends, is why I'll stick to software engineering, thank you very much.
Meanwhile, in other news, researchers announced the discovery of yet another form of buffer overflow. The discovery was announced by a laboratory in Russia, where a newly discovered malformed URL was accelerated toward an IE8 target.
Shower of Crooked So-and-Sos (Score:2)
Fermilab stitched up CERN good and proper [google.co.uk]. Remember children, never outsource your customer satisfaction.
How convenient is that. You give your main competitor dodgy magnets, shutting them down for months, then you proceed to make all the important discoveries.
Why, oh why, didn't the CERN people make their own magnets?
Its a week old (Score:2)
Whenever you want the latest on interesting stuff at Fermilab, Tommaso's blog is the place to start, he works with the CDF group. This is his post [wordpress.com] on the Y(4140).
Also, please correct the summary - there was NOT a discovery of "a new single top quark". There was a discovery of an interaction ("a production") which proceded with a single top and another quark as opposed to the more common ttbar (top+antitop) "production".
TED / Garret Lisi (Score:2)
I wonder how this maps to Garret Lisi's wonderful TED presentation on "a theory of everything"??
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_everything.html [ted.com]
Re:Another example (Score:5, Funny)
Charm my ass..
He just makes fun of the special olympics.
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For some reason, I keep thinking of that episode of "Highway to Heaven", where the special needs coach bends his finger into a fish-hook shape and puts in his mouth..
"A Special Love" or "The Squeaky Wheel".
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Of course there will be, they haven't even managed to create the black hole that will destroy mankind yet. This could be your big chance at .00000000001 seconds of fame before we all collapse into a singularity!
Seize the moment.
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Who's to say the black hole hasn't already been created?
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I think that's why some people are so upset about the LHC, it's a large hardon, whereas the US only has Fermilab, barely firm. Guess if they find the god particle, they'll orgasm, and we'll end up with Spermilab, Fetulab, Infalab, etc...
(probably should post AC)
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Go ahead, Gordon. Insert the specimen.
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Yep, very helpful. I wonder if it actually means anything, or if X,Y,psi,phi could just as easily have been Z,A,alpha,beta.
Re:Beyond Comprehension (Score:4, Informative)
This story *sounds* interesting to me as it appeals to my sense of exploration and curiosity to learn new things but beyond that this stuff basically reads like sub-atomic particle physics to me
Here's my read on it: quarks are the constituents of a wide range of particles, from protons and neutrons to B-mesons etc. The fundamental interaction that holds these particles together is the "colour force" or "strong nuclear force", which arises due to the exchange of gluons between quarks in the same way that the electro-magnetic force arises because of the exchange of photons between charged particles.
Virtual particle exchange is made possible by the uncertainty principle, which for a massless particle like the photon produces forces with infinite range, but for gluons, which have mass, it results in a short-range force. As well as mass, gluons also have "colour charge", so they interact with each other as well as with quarks, resulting in the confinement property of the strong force: if you try to pull two bound quarks apart, the gluons holding them together self-interact in a way that makes the force stronger rather than weaker. If you pull really hard you get new quarks popping out of the vacuum, and jets of exotic particles. You never get a naked quark.
Computing the bound states of quarks is really, really hard because the force is so strong. The basic technique we use in quantum electro-dynamics is perturbation theory, where we get an approximate result and then apply a series of smaller and smaller corrections to it. Because of the self-interaction of the gluons, for quantum chromo-dynamics these corrections get larger and larger, and various other mathematical techniques have to used to get a well-behaved answer.
This means that while we can predict pretty well the excited states of atoms, we can't do that for quarks. I would bet the most likely form of this particle is some kind of multi-quark object (more than just a simple pair) whose existence depends on the details of the colour force. We are still learning what those details are, and this particle and others like it will be useful laboratories to reveal them.
So the significance of the discovery is that it provides us with a new way of studying quantum chromo-dynamic interactions. Not the world's biggest deal, but still very cool and useful.