6 ms·
Physicists found 4 new subatomic particles that may test the laws of nature
- ars 6y agoThe found some more tetraquarks. Saved you some times since the article takes way way way too long to say that.
- karmakaze 6y agoYeah, don't know much more about them than that. The post is a pretty short breakdown of the Standard Model and LHC's contribution to it.
- grapecookie 6y agoStandard Model of Particle Physics is mathematical masturbation.
- cygx 6y agoSee also https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/Welcome.html#ccus https://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/Welcome.html#ccus https://cerncourier.com/a/lhcb-observes-four-new-tetraquarks/ https://cerncourier.com/a/lhcb-observes-four-new-tetraquarks... https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.01803 https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.01803
- tremon 6y agoThanks, those are really informative. Anyone know what the typical lag is between measurement and discovery for these kind of experiments? From reading between the lines, it seems to me that this discovery is based on re-analysis of the 2016 measurement data, but they don't mention the dates when the data was collected. I had expected the turnaround time to be in the order of months rather than years, e.g. 6-9 months to analyze experimental data, 6 months to prepare for publication, so let's say 1.5 years between experiment and claimed discovery. But this may be hopelessly naive, I don't have any comparable experience to rely on. Also, what's the typical lifetime of these tetraquarks? None of these configurations are stable, so is it even accurate to call them "particles"?
- exmadscientist 6y ago> None of these configurations are stable, so is it even accurate to call them "particles"? Not really, not when they're this unstable. Traditionally hadrons that decay very quickly are called "resonances" instead. The dividing line between a particle and a resonance is usually whether you quote its lifetime in seconds or MeV :) The two are directly related through the uncertainty relation, specifically the one coming from the energy-time commutator.
- _pdp_ 6y agoI don't know much about the topic, but I wonder if particles could hypothetically break down to infinity. Can someone comment?
- after_care 6y agoThe Earth is not large enough to build a particle collider big enough to test if String Theory describes the most elemental particles or if there is something smaller. We might be only a handful of generations of particle accelerators until spaced based colliders. All of this is to say, you’re going to need to be okay with you personally never knowing this answer. It’s all theoretical.
- angelbar 6y agoI die a little bit when I realize about this kind of out of reach frontiers
- intricatedetail 6y agoI cannot comprehend what would be inside a particle that would be a smallest possible one. Division to infinity feels calming.
- naebother 6y agoThese particles don't have a volume; they're point-like. They don't exactly have an inside with other particles waiting to burst out. These are just mathematical abstractions after all, good at making some predictions. May or may not be actual reality.
- intricatedetail 6y agoBut when I picture a point, I can see it and since it has a visible area, then what's in it? That's my problem. I could picture it as nothing maybe? But then what's in the blank space? It has a volume...