Quarks Know Their Left From Their Right 150
sciencehabit writes "How an electron interacts with other matter depends on which way it's spinning as it zips along—to the right like a football thrown by a right-handed quarterback or the left like a pigskin thrown by a lefty. Now, physicists have confirmed that quarks—the particles that join in trios to form the protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei—exhibit the same asymmetry. The result could give physics a new weapon in the grand hunt for new particles and forces. Or they can search for subtle hints of exotic new things beyond their tried-and-true standard model by studying familiar particles in great detail. In the latter approach, the new experiment gives physicists a way to probe for certain kinds of new forces."
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Beta Quarks (Score:2)
Fuck Beta
The Fine Print doesn't cover Beta (Score:2)
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
But your Beta abomination is the cause of most of the comments now. >:(
Signatures not visible unless logged in? (Score:2)
Title says it all. Is this recent?
I kinda feel I've been told to shut up. :(
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No, this is not recent. I've been on this site nearly a decade, but never registered an account.
I've never seen a sig.
Nothing new here? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes I was wondering about that.
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If you had RTFnatureA, you would have seen that the new measurement can be combined with old measurements to more tightly constrain the measurements of certain coupling constants, and it is consistent with the standard model. This is science, improving upon old measurements and verifying if the theory is still valid.
Olives and quark? (Score:2)
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I was never a DS9 fan. All that benjamin messiah nonsense...
Thank you for explaining left and right to me(!) (Score:5, Interesting)
to the right like a football thrown by a right-handed quarterback or the left like a pigskin thrown by a lefty.
Oh, thanks, I was having such trouble working out what you meant by "left" and "right." And thanks for confusing some of your non-American readers with your references to footballs that you throw (what's that about?), and then referring to them almost immediately afterwards as "pigskins" instead.
Of course it's a terrible analogy anyway, since particle spin is only loosely analogous to every-day spin.
If it was that kind of spin, wouldn't "clockwise" and "anti-clockwise" be better words for it anyway? "Left" and "right" need a decision on which point you're looking at as well as direction.
Does it all come from electrons spiralling left or right in the old particle accelerators?
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I also have no idea how football will rotate when it is thrown by an right-handed quarterback .... footballs are meant to be kicked, hence the name.
Football does not refer to which part of the body is supposed to connect with the ball (otherwise it'd be called HeadKneeChestHandFootBall), but rather the fact that the game is played on-foot (as opposed to Polo, another old and popular game).
Make Beta opt-in, and Classic the default.... (Score:2)
By your reasoning, then volleyball, baseball, basketball, bowling, and many others should also be called football, because they are all played on foot.
Since we're apparently making stuff up, I say the reason we call it football is:
1.) Most Americans(USA) can't pronounce those foreign words like 'Rugby'
2.) Most Americans(USA) couldn't(and don't) understand Rugby anyway.
3.) We couldn't understand or say Rugby, but we liked the ball....didn't have to chase it as far as a round one!
And finally:
'PGC (880972)' wa
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Okay, so it turns out there is no definitive answer on the source of the term "Football". Some people think it's from the fact that you kick the ball with your foot, but others think it's from the fact that you play the game on-foot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Your post is wrong either way, since Football can in fact refer to Rugby, making our usage of the term totally appropriate.
Helicity (Score:2)
The names come from the curl of your fingers in your left and right hands. If you pretend that the electron is a physically spinni
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either the spin is in the same direction as the direction of motion
But if it's how you suggest with the curled fingers and the thumb, isn't it always at 90 degrees to the direction of motion? Or was the way you said it (same/opposite direction as motion) just the convention of these things?
Anyway, thanks. And I don't care what anyone says, I liked you in those campy 70s Bond movies.
parity violations (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia has this to say: Since neutral kaons carry strangeness, they cannot be their own antiparticles. Which, to me, may as well me an incantation to be mumbled over three skulls and a chicken. What real-world thing can be made with this knowledge?
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Suns, planets, moons, comets, black holes, people, cats, dogs, monkeys, houses, spaceships, computers, cheese, explosions, viruses, trombones, lights, rocks, movies, paper, iPhones, wind, paintings, thoughts, ...
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Wikipedia has this to say: Since neutral kaons carry strangeness, they cannot be their own antiparticles. Which, to me, may as well me an incantation to be mumbled over three skulls and a chicken. What real-world thing can be made with this knowledge?
Ugh ugh, Wikipedia say "Lightning is massive electrostatic discharge." Me not know what electro-whatever mean. What you make with electro-whatever? You can make big club? You can make sharp spear? Electro-whatever is dumb. Me know lightning throw by big god. Big god hate you dumb science. Me hit you with club now.
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Re:Fuck Beta now = Slashdot in Google (Score:5, Insightful)
It took a day or two, but now when I google "fuck beta" all the top results are from slashdot. Yay.
Yeah, we should be proud of that. Now slashdot has already been added to most filters, reducing access to millions of people, because of the potty mouth nerds who couldn't find a better way to articulate their frustration.
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It took a day or two, but now when I google "f%ck beta" all the top results are from slashdot. Yay.
Yeah, we should be proud of that. Now slashdot has already been added to most filters, reducing access to millions of people, because of the potty mouth nerds who couldn't find a better way to articulate their frustration.
You increased the potty mouthed hit count right there. If you just used the "bleep" characters %^&*@# -- well, I guess you guys can't win for losing. The SlashDot has a lot of people who don't like change. Go figure.
Re:F@ck Beta now = Slashdot in Google (Score:2)
I agree with that frustration of total impotence. A lot of blogs are moving to FaceBook login credentials or Google. I've stopped blogging at a few websites just for that reason.
It seems there is a commercial anti-privacy agenda because everyone wants to make MORE MONEY per each head on their website -- rather than live with expenses to benefit from visitors, without trying to get too much out of every hit. You can't get commercial money without PROVEN eyeballs and without mixing ads with your content.
The o
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It took a day or two, but now when I google "fuck beta" all the top results are from slashdot. Yay.
I wouldn't be surprised if that works the other way around, too.
Fuck Slashdot Beta (Score:1)
Give me Classic (permanently) or give me death!
Spin (Score:2)
If the spin of the particle (electron in the summary) is germaine to the observed properties of the particle does that mean there are two different particles involved. For instance if a left spinning quark or electron interacts this way and a right spinning quark or electron interacts that way, are there two different types of quarks or electrons involved.
Until now, there have been neutrons, protons and electrons. However, does this really mean there are six atomic particles instead of three?
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It was tricky trying to figure out actual science from the crap in the article, but here's what I was able to figure out:
Neutrons and protons aren't fundamental particles. They're made up of more fundamental particles, quarks. There are six kinds of quarks, though only two of them (up and down) go into making up protons and neutrons. There are also three "kinds" of electrons (electron, muon, tau) and three kinds of neutrinos. Those, plus the bosons (photon, gluon, W and Z, Higgs) are all the fundamental par
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If the spin of the particle (electron in the summary) is germaine to the observed properties of the particle does that mean there are two different particles involved?
Yes! And there always has been. Left-handed particles are not the same as right-handed ones. Quarks in particular come in a dizzying amount of varieties. There are 6 flavors times 3 colors times 2 spins times 2 for regular/anti. So in total there are actually 72 kinds of quark!
But people find it easier to talk about there being fewer kinds and specifying the exact types only as necessary. That makes sense, because particles of one type can change into particles of another type pretty easily. For example, yo
Americans don't even get where they went wrong (Score:2)
Like a football thrown...
Don't you get it? Even now don't you get it?
Make Beta opt-in and Classic the default... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, an embarrassingly small percentage of us do, but we are a small minority here.
I heard that it used to be different before 'politician' was job, then a career.
Well, it just goes to show you...
If you give footballs to Americans, they'll try to sharpen the ends, and attack each other, then comes slashdot beta!
Where is the story? (Score:2)
I can't read it, because when Beta smears all over my screen I have to close my eyes :(
The future of Slashdot (Score:1)
Horrible article (Score:2)
Besides leaving out that the uncertainty in the reported measurements is still very large, this article is about as poorly written as possible.
Electrons do not "spin" like footballs and quarks do not go zippity doo da.
Shazbot! We ran into some trouble getting the comm (Score:1)
Do quarks know a Beta from a Classic view ? (Score:1)
...
Thanks Obama... (Score:3, Funny)
"If you like Slashdot classic, you can keep Slashdot classic. Period"
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Yes, we are (Score:2)
Yes, you are, or at least most people viewing slashdot are (some are contributors). If slashdot is serving up media to its viewers, the viewers of that media would be consumers, just like at the theater. However, being a consumer has an implicit financial aspect and people view slashdot without paying for it. As such, we aren't consumers but instead we are simply viewers and viewers of a media production are called the audience.
Slashdot refines it even further. The media being presented is news and the tar
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Oops, meant to respond to the post further up. My mistake.
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The question is, who provides the content? Or more to the point, what *is* the content? I certainly don't come to Slashdot for the stream of extremely poorly edited summaries of stale news clips, and I'm hardly alone. We come here for the discussions. Sometimes I post, sometimes I just read, but it's the comments that make the place worthwhile, not the "news". As such I am not an audience of Slashdot, I'm an audience of other members of the community. And a contributor to the content that keeps other
Re:We are not an audience (Score:5, Insightful)
MATHJAX !! + UTF-8 !!
Re:We are not an audience (Score:5, Insightful)
Stack Exchange should just go ahead and write a Slashdot replacement, I'd be over there in a second. Unlike the trained chimps at Dice, they know how to do web design, they understand the concept of a site driven by user content, and they don't have contempt for their users.
Censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody remember how Slashdot never used to delete posts? Then they were forced into it by the Scientology thing. Well, that has changed.
Stories submitted to the Slashdot firehose that take a negative view on the site's redesign are being deleted. 4 hours ago, it was full of anti-beta posts. Now they are gone. That's right. A forum that usually leaves V14GRA spam in place for posterity is deleting user content.
Then there is this [slashdot.org] comment. It was the first post on the Beta discussion thread. As such,
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Informative)
We've deleted nothing, as the vast sea of comments complaining about the beta in every story should attest to. All submissions are still around, too, though they eventually drop out of the firehose like any other submission does. If you want a simple test, bookmark the URL whenever you submit something.
I suppose it wouldn't be a redesign without conspiracy theories, though.
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What the hell - you're actually still calling this a redesign?
How? How could you possibly even think that - how could that even be in your mind at this point?
It's not a redesign - it's a deconstruction, a demolition, a long and soundly rejected betrayal of all your users desires.
It's the Ultima IX of websites.
It's cursed by such a fetid stink that you couldn't possibly be imagining to continue with THIS beta as a base for anything that would ever be accepted as a usable end product. Could you? How could
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You exaggerate. It's still better than most sites, I think. Of course, I never go to most sites.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Funny)
We've deleted nothing, as the vast sea of comments complaining about the beta in every story should attest to. All submissions are still around, too, though they eventually drop out of the firehose like any other submission does. If you want a simple test, bookmark the URL whenever you submit something.
I suppose it wouldn't be a redesign without conspiracy theories, though.
Your facts will never persuade us!
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The Beta Conspiracy Revealed (Score:2)
This whole beta fiasco is a conspiracy ...
It is a way to give old timers extra karma when they post complaining about how badly beta sucks ...
Now, the question is who is behind it ... Must be Katz and Bennet Hasleton ...
Like this comment, mod it up to +5 already ...
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I'm afraid that's just not the case. If you're not seeing comments you expect to see, it's likely that you either don't have your thresholds set right (probably not, since you mentioned browsing at -1), or you don't have all the comments loaded on the story. When a story get beyond a certain number of comments, you'll have to hit the button at the top that loads more.
"Flag this comment" button is not hooked to any automation -- feel free to test it on any comment you like. All it does it put the comment on
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I appreciate your reply. I will pay closer attention the next time I see it. I've seen the case in a thread where a message is missing, but there are replies to that message below it. I noticed it because the indentation was one off to the right. In any event, I'll pay better attention next time. As I mentioned, I've seen it in contentious threads and articles, which one would also expect them to attract the largest number of posts.
Thanks also about the explanation for the "Flag this comment." I could
Re:Given the way you guys are downmodding (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, you don't have to rely on credibility. Here's a story more than a day old [slashdot.org]. About 15% of the comments are rated 4 or 5, which is a pretty typical percentage, and all of them are complaining about the beta. It's like that in a lot of stories. As for submissions -- well, they pass through the firehose like everything else, and why you don't ever see submissions from a week ago sticking around in it. That's why it's called the firehose.
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but how else will people come to this site if we don't explain spinning quarks via (american)football (aka handegg) metaphors?
and of course this needs to become a site for the wider audience, it's a wide open market, noone else is doing it, they'll corner the market in no time, while keeping all the technical users currently making this site a reasonable success :).
it's the best marketing strategy since new coke!
Re:We are not an audience (Score:5, Funny)
An American football isn't egg shaped, so it won't be handegg. The correct term would be hand prolate spheroid.
HTH, HAND.
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A prolate spheroid doesn't taper to points on the end. You'd need an infinite series of spherical harmonics to describe an American football, not just the degree-2 term. Though it's sufficiently elongated that spherical harmonics might not be the best basis set. Bessel functions?
Re:We are not an audience (Score:4, Insightful)
See, that's why I come to slashdot. Posters on reddit are neither knowledgeable enough to argue that point, nor pedantic enough to point it out.
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Not only that, but he pointed it out more accurately than I could have. I would have had to leave it at "but a prolate sphereoid isn't pointed".
Even so, I'm not sure that a simple series, no matter WHAT the basis, could manage the ridgings at the points of the football. That's a pretty complex curve.
Re:We are not an audience (Score:5, Informative)
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It's not handegg metaphors that will get you a wider audience, it's car metaphors. It's like when your fourth and long, deep in your own territory with a manual transmission and you don't know how to drive with a stick shift. See?
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And your comment is the worst waste of space since Slashdot beta source code.
Your comment is a waste, because watering down the summaries to metaphors such that every reader around the world will both understand and identify with them is just another way of pandering to the lowest common denominator. If you're interested in helping Slashdot spin down the drain, incessantly demanding the elimination of every scratch of American-centric (or any country's) writing is a great way to do it.
American football is
Thank you re: first post (Score:1)
Rather bizarre... (Score:2)
Hang on, what?
That's a rather random post on an article about quarks...
I really like the new Slashdot. It's 2014 after all - the site has to keep up with modern technology. Classic Slashdot was starting to look rather long in the tooth.
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I really like the new Slashdot. It's 2014 after all - the site has to keep up with modern technology. Classic Slashdot was starting to look rather long in the tooth.
I really like the new Slashdot. It's 2014 after all - the site has to keep up with modern hucksterism . Classic Slashdot was starting to look rather trustworthy.
FTFY
Yes we are (Score:2)
Yes, you are, or at least most people viewing slashdot are. Some people are contributors, those who post the articles, but the vast majority are viewers, even if they post comments.
If slashdot is serving up media to its viewers, the viewers of that media would be consumers, just like at the theater. However, being a consumer has an implicit financial aspect and people view slashdot without paying for it. As such, we aren't consumers but instead we are simply viewers and viewers of a media production are cal
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Agreed. The stories on Slashdot I generally saw the day before on Reddit or elsewhere. But I come to Slashdot for the discussion, because this is the place where I find the most knowledgeable posters. If I can't read the comments and participate in the discussion, what the fuck is the point? To read three-day-old stories? Meh.
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I have to disagree. I''ve maintained my Slashdot notice since nearly the beginning (well over a decade at least) to catch links to insightful articles about issues of science, technology, and socio-political observations affecting science and technology.
The hateful trolling and petty squabbling in the comments are usually ignored. On rare occasions where there seems to be a significant percentage of actual thoughtful discussion of the original post, I'll skim past the trolls to catch the key points of any e
Don't have any points to moderate you up... (Score:1)
and I was so sure that there wasn't anything worse in life than getting duped into clicking a goatse link!
Beta Boycott '14
Make Beta opt-in, Classic by default...... (Score:3)
Well, I went to the beta site the other day to see what the fuss was about.
GHAAHH!!!
Some things you just cannot UNSEE!!!! The horror!!!
It reminded me of the time I had just finished setting up a 4 monitor desktop....Man, I can REALLY slash my dots now!
I went straight to slashdot, and quickly I had 4 different articles with comments opened, one on each screen!!!
Well, then IT happened....
I quickly ran to the restroom, okay, back to the PC...okay.
Drafty? Hmmm...*look down, zipper undone*
I start to zip up my tr
Goatse (Score:2)
Goatse is better than Beta.
Please don't give them any ideas! It's bad enough already.
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I think you are wrong about Goatse being better than Beta...even less worse would, in my opinion, be wrong.
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Ditto, in the last week I've spent probably 18 points on 'Offtopic' mods.
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Interesting how 90& of all FB-haters are ACs ...
That is probably associated with the fact that 25% of them are forced to use it [slashdot.org]:
Right now, we're directing 25 percent of non-logged-in users to the beta; it's a significant number, but it's the best way for us to test drive this new design.
Given how obviously horrible the beta design is, this sentiment on the best way to test drive it is quite galling. OTOH, I am thankful they are not responsible for design airplanes or automobiles:
Yes, for the first test-flight we have filled 25% of the new plane with unsuspecting passengers but this is the best way for us to test drive our new design.
It has occured to me that maybe they trying to alienate the slashdot community
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http://pullup.herokuapp.com/ [herokuapp.com]
It is by pull request only, so you have to be able to program Node.js in order to become a user.
No discussions yet, only user submitted links.
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Thunderbird is a good cross-platform solution, though its competences are basic by the standards of people who love Usenet. But it's easy to get for Mac, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.
On the Mac, though you have to pay for it, there's Unison, which is nice. Otherwise you can google MT-Newsreader or Pineapple Newsreader, both of which have been updated from the old Mac OS9 days and are useful and good software.
There are a ton of newsreaders for Windows. A lot of people like Gravity or Forte, but I'm not on
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LOL I wish I can mod you up :)
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The Baby and the Bathwater (Score:2)
The new shit is buggy and is missing features, they've said they'll h
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Given that and web design that sacrifices half the screen real estate for a sea of white is seriously broken, together with the fact that it's been that way since beta first came out in October, been complained about, and not fixed tells most people all they need to know about how much Slashdot cares about "user experience" and the feedback of the community.
I think that what Slashdot needs to do is simple: First, stop the beta NOW. It's sunk cost with a VERY bad outcome. Stop throwing good money after bad.
Down with /. beta! (Score:2)
'vocal minority'? [citation needed]
The actual numbers may surprise you.
Where did you get your data for that?
I would be interested to see it.
And I have not been a 'pimply little fuck' since the mid 1960's.
You might want to brush up on obscene vocabulary and insult techniques, yours are uninspired at best.(actually quite lame)