First LHC Data Hint At New Particle 124
Anonymous Dupeur writes "Only 12 hours after the start of operation of the Large Hardon Collider at an unprecedentedly high energy level, a discovery had been made. Today, in its press release, CERN disclosed the observation of a new class — paleoparticles. 'It's awful,' explains Alain Grand, still shocked by the discovery. 'It left horrible tracks inside the detector that made the physicists on duty at the time feel quite sick.' No wonder. The particle consists of two strange quarks and one top quark but no beauty or charm quark. The physicists have nicknamed it the 'neutrinosaurus.' This marks a first success of the — finally — started experiment."
ahh yes, the "Devil Particle" (Score:5, Funny)
ahh yes, the "Devil Particle"
although wouldn't the existence of a Devil Particle prove the existence of the God Particle?
Re:ahh yes, the "Devil Particle" (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
They say the Devil Particle's greatest accomplishment was convincing Fermilab it didn't exist.
What that say about the accomplishment of the God Particle?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Rather the other way around?
(PS. Overall /me likes this one... ;) ...somehow too bad it's fiction; but otoh - which philosophy is or isn't?)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, it would just prove that the God Particle existed at one point in time. It was there for the big bang, but then it turned into the Topeka Particle.
Re:ahh yes, the "Devil Particle" (Score:4, Insightful)
---
LHC [feeddistiller.com] blogs articles at Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Top quarks don't live long enough to be bound to anything else.
Quarks are ALWAYS bound to something else. A solitary quark has never been seen.
Re: (Score:1)
From the wikipedia article for top quark [wikipedia.org]:
The only known way that a top quark can decay is through the weak interaction producing a W-boson and a down-type quark (down, strange, or bottom). Because of its enormous mass, the top quark is extremely short lived with a predicted lifetime of only 5×1025 s. As a result top quarks do not have time to form hadrons before they decay, as other quarks do. This provides physicists with the unique opportunity the study the behavior of a bare quark.
So for any of the other five quarks you'd be right, but not for the top quark. True, a top quark won't be bound lying about. But neither will it be found bound in any hadrons—that is, mesons (quark-antiquark pairs) and baryons (three quark triplets)—like the other five. The only way to get a top quark is to create one, and then it only exists (bare, by itself) for a very, very short time.
Re: (Score:2)
watch some DS9 sometime!...
BWAHAHAHAHAHA... I'll get my coat.
Re: (Score:2)
In colliders we actually do a lot with particles that barely exist at all. What a detector observes is the travel of long lived particles into material it can interact with, so electrons, photons, muons, pions, protons, and maybe some lam
Re:ahh yes, the "Devil Particle" (Score:5, Funny)
I am a Top quark, you insen
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Speaking of the wonderfully named quarks. My physicist friend got married last year, and you can be sure, we brought up "if his wife was a quark, would she be a top quark or a bottom quark"? The man laughed at that joke, as only a supremely drunk physicist could.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Proof denies faith, and without faith, God is nothing. If the Devil particle proves God exists, then by God's argument's, He doesn't.
That is circular logic where you assume that faith has any effect on god. It has an effect on man and how they perceive the world around them.
Re: (Score:2)
Proof obsoletes belief, and with it faith. If something proves anything about gods, then it's no longer palatable to the faithfull.
Re: (Score:1)
Proof denies faith, and without faith, God is nothing. If the Devil particle proves God exists, then by God's argument's, He doesn't.
I have a good advice for you: Avoid zebra crossings!
April Fools! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually there was some real LHC news, unless I've been spoofed. The AP is running a story [yahoo.com] "Atom smasher will help reveal 'the beginning'" Some choice bits that make me wonder if they're serious:
"This is the Jurassic Park for particle physicists," said Phil Schewe, a spokesman for the American Institute of Physics. He called the collider a time machin
Pics or it didn't happen. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pics or it didn't happen. (Score:5, Funny)
*Looks left*
Clever girl...
Re: (Score:2)
If they think this particle left a mess inside the collider, just wait till they find the particle with two bottom quarks.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Wait until they engineer the five-assed Quark!
Just Sad.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just Sad.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it is. When are those idiots going to realize that the whole "quark" thing was an April fool's joke?
Re:Just Sad.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
...meanwhile the rest is still using its fruits ;/
A new history of the universe (Score:3, Funny)
Some even speculate a series of avian particles evolved from paleoparticles as the universe cooled.
As Asimov said, (Score:2)
Re:As Asimov said, (Score:5, Funny)
More exciting than "that's funny" is "No no, that's impossible, everyone RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"
Re:As Asimov said, (Score:5, Funny)
At least you get to hear it more often. There are a few things you do not want to hear in a nuclear lab. One of them is "Now that's odd, that shouldn't happen..."
Re: (Score:2)
Also if you ever hear someone say anything about a "resonance cascade", you better haul ass (for the nearest crowbar)!
Re: (Score:2)
Please. Not a "top" quark. (Score:2)
A TRUTH quark. Which means that this story is indubitably true.
Large Hard-on Collider (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, there were multiple clues (Score:2)
I know it's 1 April and everything but did anyone notice anything strange in the spelling of `Large Hardon Collider`?
Yes. [excessive snickering, sorry]. I noticed references to "top" and "beauty" quarks. To be consistent, I think it would be top and bottom, or truth and beauty. After that I noticed the more obvious Hardon reference.
This particle is so devious (Score:5, Funny)
It reached back through time and disabled the LHC several times just so that it could ensure it would not be discovered until April Fools day.
Re: (Score:2)
I already said [slashdot.org] something like that last December.
My favorite part of this made up story... (Score:5, Funny)
"Hints of the new particle had already been glimpsed in two events at Fermilab but the statistics were too low to be published. The four events observed at the LHC generated an exponential increase (2^2=4) in the statistics, allowing the physicists to announce the discovery unequivocally. "
That made me laugh out loud at work (I'm on lunch, give me a break).
Damn, I forgot (Score:1, Troll)
/. does not exist on April 1st, it is replaced by a lame joke site. How about some surprising but true articles and maybe one hoax next year just to shake things up a bit.
Lighten up (Score:5, Insightful)
April Fool's is one of the only near-universally-celebrated, meaningful, capitalism-unencumbered holidays on this planet. It only requires you to have a sense of humor. For one day out of 365.25, everyone tells silly jokes. It's not about trolling and it's not about making people miserable. It's one of the only good things left in the world. I can't understand people who are just incapable of handling it.
Re:Lighten up (Score:4, Informative)
Here, in the UK, it's not people telling funny jokes. It's people pulling practical jokes on other people.
Perhaps this is another of the US/UK differences (or maybe US/everywhere else). All my other (UK-based) news sources took the opportunity for some reasonably clever and subtle jokes but otherwise carried on as normal, Slashdot just spends the day 'telling silly jokes' as you put it. Having an entire site dedicated to neither believable nor particularly funny jokes kinda ruins the idea in my mind, but it's nice to see that someone enjoys it.
Re: (Score:2)
April Fool's is one of the only near-universally-celebrated, meaningful, capitalism-unencumbered holidays on this planet. It only requires you to have a sense of humor. For one day out of 365.25, everyone tells silly jokes.
April Fool's is NOT about a bunch of people acting like idiots. It's about the apprehension of knowing that at any moment somebody may do or say something completely unexpected. It's about needing to stop for minute to figure out whether your colleague was really being serious about tha
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Lighten up (Score:4, Insightful)
THANK YOU.
We're overwhelmed by bad news every day of the calendar year, so it's nice to have ONE DAY where you can just sit back and be entertained. You guys and gals can all go back to whining about Apple's newest review (slashvertisement), MS FUD articles, or correlationisnotcausation articles tomorrow.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, yes, but it doesn't have the pink background AND I STILL WANT THAT DAMN PONY!
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
"It's one of the only good things left in the world."
Just wait till congress finds this out.
Re: (Score:2)
It only requires you to have a sense of humor. I can't understand people who are just incapable of handling it.
1. You answered your own question -- some folks have no sense of humor
2. It hasn't been monetized, and that's blasphemy in the US.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that a good April Fool's joke can masquerade as something legit and will genuinely fool some people. And while a number of the articles that have been linked to from Slashdot might actually qualify individually, it diminishes it somewhat when your default expectation is a prank. It'd be better if there were one or two spoof stories hidden amongst a stream of legit stories.
Slashdot is kind of like the kid who doesn't quite understand the idea that sometimes once == funny, twice == funnier, t
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is kind of like the kid who doesn't quite understand the idea that sometimes once == funny, twice == funnier, three times == less funny, four times == overkill, five times == annoying.
And then six == less funny and seven == funny again. So we have a sinusoidal pattern with a period of 6.
So yeah, listen up kids! Telling the same joke five times isn't funny, it's annoying! So instead always make sure to tell the joke (N*6 + 2) times where N is an integer!
Re: (Score:2)
In the hands of the right teller, that actually holds true, though rarely for a third cycle.
Re: (Score:2)
In the hands of the right teller, that actually holds true, though rarely for a third cycle.
I have discovered a wonderful proof for this though sadly this text box is too narrow to contain it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's one of the only good things left in the world.
holy cow dude, I totally agree that April Fool's is cool, but what kind of world do you live in exactly? The world is a WAY better place than it was a hundred years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
The people who hate April Fools Day were probably the ones who were consistently pranked on as children - that or they were left out of the fun and games completely.
Such people grow up to be humorless, bitter men with no social lives and a refrigerator full of cheese that is going bad. I'm not sure what that last bit is about, but I swear it happens every time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In astronomy, the Julian year is a unit of time, defined as 365.25 days of 86,400 SI seconds each.
- Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Interesting.
AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!! 4-1 is bad news day! (Score:3)
got all excited about finding a new particle...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Lol April Fools!
That's not all they found! (Score:2)
ha (Score:1)
ha?
Link (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Iz in Ur Collizions
Calling in sick next 4/1 (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
> All news is crap jokes that are fooling no one.
You're just noticing now? That's been true for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Some of the classics fooled many people. The BBC's documentary on the spaghetti harvest, Patrick Moore's gravity reduction experiment, The Guardian's stories on the Outer Focus mountains and the Serif islands, etc. The Slashdot link-up with cuteoverload didn't so much fool people as amuse (and it amused many!)
If nobody is publishing any good April Fools jokes this year, just remember that "nobody" includes you. Where's your contribution?
Stop it. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Hey look, someone who's new here! Welcome to April Fool's Day, when Slashdot goes overboard.
Re: (Score:2)
> ...Slashdot goes overboard.
Looks like everyday Slashdot to me. Isn't this a joke site?
Re: (Score:2)
I ran the numerous "quarks" by Google Translate (Score:2)
it has been identified as a pond of duck scum.
Aprilfoolium (Score:2)
It's just like Unobtainium, except not real.
I'm going to downgrade my recent poll answer (Score:1)
STOP IT!!! (Score:2)
I have no sense of humor and I can't handle the overall air of silliness that has blanketed Slashdot. You all suck for having way too much fun!
Won't somebody please think of those with Asperger's?
I'm going to go sulk now. LEAVE ME ALONE!
Re: (Score:2)
I have Asperger's and I love the true classic April Fools jokes, including some of the truly great ones that have appeared on Slashdot in the past. True, this year's batch aren't impressive in comparison, but don't blame others if you're not writing any.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not realy the problem. The real problem is that there is real news mixed up with april fools in the news sources today.
I hate that too. If I wanted to have April Fools, I would go watch Union News Network, which is by extend a thousand times more awesome than every april fools news post on the entire intarwebs combined...
great, but... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
sqrt(-1)
So is it a joke or not? (Score:1, Informative)
This article... joke or not? its too subtle.
And that chat roullette thing... funny, but posting it on every article with no means to turn off?? See you tomorrow then.
Re: (Score:1)
just cover your head with tinfoil or press a gum on your webcam.
Re: (Score:2)
That, and the black hole... (Score:1)
hmm (Score:1)
Naughty (Score:1)
Alan "Jurassic" Grant (Score:2)
Great (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Itself backwards, don't want to feel and some of the Subscribers. Please BSD managed to make balance is struck, correct network users. This is area. It is the Creek, abysmal A need to play You. The tireless Morning. Now I have reciprocating Usenet is roughly Parts of you are like they are Come OF AmERICA) today, By fundamental will recall that it obligated to care networking test. and committees Core team. They a way to spend Pooper. Nothing survival prospects want them there. successes with the or make loud noises on an endeavour steadily fucking 'first post' Operating systems
Are the automated troll-bots finally becoming sentient? This one has me scared...
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that one of those new-ish byte-code hacks that take over your computer? I don't care because I am using a rare and new browser on SELinux with latest security fixes.
But if so and you are a Windows user, then kiss your security goodbye ;)
And no, it's not a 4/1
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Awww, boohoo, does somebody need their bwanky?
Who's upset because their whole wife wevolves awound Swashdot?
Yes you are! Yes you are! Aren't you? Aren't you just a big cwy baby?
</baby voice>
Grow up a bit and have some fun, yeah? It wouldn't kill you to take the stick out of your ass for one day a year.
Re: (Score:2)
You wouldn't even have a point were there anything even remotely funny about what's being posted. It's just story after story of very obvious falsehoods. There's nothing remotely intelligent about this. It's below 'ape throwing feces' on the humor scale. I have more fun watching Glenn Beck crying.
It's just too much. If sites could show some restraint and maybe do one thing every decade or two, that'd be one thing. Every site every year on the same day (actually, some loser-sites posted on the 31:st, because