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Science

First LHC Data Hint At New Particle 124

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-no-black-holes dept.
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."
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First LHC Data Hint At New Particle More

First LHC Data Hint At New Particle

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  • ahh yes, the "Devil Particle" (Score:5, Funny)

    by thomasdz ( 178114 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @12:56PM (#31701218)

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 01, 2010 @12:59PM (#31701254)
      They say the Devil Particle's greatest accomplishment was convincing Fermilab it didn't exist.

      • 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:3, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 )
      According to Negentropism [wikidot.com], the devil is entropy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sznupi ( 719324 )

        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)

      by characterZer0 ( 138196 )

      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)

      by physburn ( 1095481 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:02PM (#31701296) Homepage Journal
      Funny April fool, but done, over at that scienfic blogging they had the LHC discovering the graviton. Paleo particles, dinosaur hadrons, thats funny. Not LOL but funny. I have to be Pedantic though, Top quarks don't live long enough to be bound to anything else.

      ---

      LHC [feeddistiller.com] blogs articles at Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]

      • 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.

        • 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.

        • watch some DS9 sometime!...

          BWAHAHAHAHAHA... I'll get my coat.

        • Sibling is correct, top quarks don't live long enough. The hadronic energy scale is at about 200 MeV, and the available energy in a W decay from t to b is fairly close to the top quark mass: 171 GeV. So the time scale is about 1000 times faster (back of the envelope).

          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)

        by mcgrew ( 92797 ) * on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:35PM (#31701552) Homepage Journal

        I am a Top quark, you insen

      • Sadly when I first read this, I figured 'neutrinosaurus' wasn't such a strange name for a quark. I mean, hell, strange is already one.

        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)

      by Locke2005 ( 849178 )
      "The greatest trick the devil particle ever played was convincing people that it didn't exist..."

  • April Fools! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by haggus71 ( 1051238 )
    Like the thing is gonna make such a fast discovery...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

      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:

      ...physicist Michio Kaku told The Associated Press "This is a Genesis machine. It'll help to recreate the most glorious event in the history of the universe."

      "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)

    by SOdhner ( 1619761 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:00PM (#31701260) Homepage Journal
    Aww, I was expecting a funny picture of a CERN scientist being chased by a velocineutron. Bah.

  • Just Sad.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mace9984 ( 1406805 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:01PM (#31701270) Journal
    This is just sad...

  • A new history of the universe (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:01PM (#31701274)

    Some even speculate a series of avian particles evolved from paleoparticles as the universe cooled.

  • The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."

  • A TRUTH quark. Which means that this story is indubitably true.

  • Large Hard-on Collider (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ohio Calvinist ( 895750 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:03PM (#31701304)
    I know it's 1 April and everything but did anyone notice anything strange in the spelling of `Large Hardon Collider`?

  • This particle is so devious (Score:5, Funny)

    by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:03PM (#31701310)

    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.

  • My favorite part of this made up story... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MistrBlank ( 1183469 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:04PM (#31701322)

    "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)

    by joss ( 1346 )

    /. 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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:11PM (#31701366)

      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)

        by lordandmaker ( 960504 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:26PM (#31701476) Homepage

        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.

      • 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)

          by Jangchub ( 1139089 )
          Well, I for one totally bought into the complex ploy that Slashdot was populated by mature individuals that could take an unfunny joke or a slight inconvenience and not rage and piss their pants all over their keyboard! I mean I've believed it for months! Good show Slashdot! I'm the biggest April Fool!

      • Re:Lighten up (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Clandestine_Blaze ( 1019274 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:37PM (#31701572) Journal

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Yes, yes, but it doesn't have the pink background AND I STILL WANT THAT DAMN PONY!

      • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by Archangel Michael ( 180766 )

        "It's one of the only good things left in the world."

        Just wait till congress finds this out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

        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)

        by mooingyak ( 720677 )

        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

        • 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!

          • In the hands of the right teller, that actually holds true, though rarely for a third cycle.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by VShael ( 62735 )

              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.

      • Please visit my site http://www.aprilonecards.com/ [aprilonecards.com] to purchase a card commemorating this day! Send an LHC card to your favorite physicist! Buy a Google Wave peronal notifier!

      • 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.

      • 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.

  • AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!! 4-1 is bad news day! (Score:3)

    by jkinney3 ( 535278 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:09PM (#31701356)
    I'm going to have to start putting a squid block on slashdot on Aprils fools day.

    got all excited about finding a new particle...

  • The Reg has coverage of an even more important discovery [theregister.co.uk] at the LHC.

  • ha (Score:1)

    by pele ( 151312 )

    ha?

  • Here [icanhazlar...llider.com] is a picture of the event.

  • Calling in sick next 4/1 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Liquidrage ( 640463 ) on Thursday April 01, 2010 @01:19PM (#31701428)
    and unplugging. Not even worth going on the web at this point. All news is crap jokes that are fooling no one. Part of the 4/1 joke should be that it might fool someone.

    • > All news is crap jokes that are fooling no one.

      You're just noticing now? That's been true for decades.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      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 turning Slashdot into a parody of itself. There have already been too many fucking April Fools "jokes". Stop it. Stop it NOW.

  • it has been identified as a pond of duck scum.

  • It's just like Unobtainium, except not real.

  • to "average," because I'm not smart enough to know whether this was an April Fool's joke without looking at the comments.

  • 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)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      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.

    • 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...

  • All I want to know is: how many electron-volts were generated?

  • So is it a joke or not? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • Good but I'm still looking for today's best.
  • Would this be the result of the naughty quark discovered by James Isaac Neutron at The Pomina school of advanced Physics?
  • It's April 2nd in Finland now, so I hope some of you might actually believe this. There is a guy called Alan Grant at CERN, he was one of my supervisors during my Summer Studentship in 2001. There is also the Jura mountain range that passes by CERN. I climbed up to the nearest summit one day. It's the mountain range that gives name to the prehistoric Jurassic period.
  • Funny name "neutrinosaurus". That would be annoying. We can barely see neutrinos.

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