8 ms·
Over the past 10 years, the LHC has found more than 50 new hadrons
- Kye 5y agoHadron and On and On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-hSgL1R74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-hSgL1R74
- herodoturtle 5y agoFifteen hundred and seven. <3
- tobiasSoftware 5y agoAlways nice to hear some Kirsty Hawkshaw, her two Opus III albums are some of my favorite music to program to.
- sthnblllII 5y agoThis is reminiscent of Seaborg's work in the 1960's that lead to the discovery of lots of new heavy elements. Everyone was pretty sure they could be created but someone had to build an accelerator to do it.
- lapetitejort 5y agoThere's a hypothesis that we'll eventually find more stable superheavy elements as the number of neutrons increases in the nucleus [0]. Perhaps we'll find something like that in hadrons (not counting protons and neutrons of course)? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability
- BitwiseFool 5y agoHere's an ignorant question, but my understanding is that every element has an emission/absorption spectra. That being the case, why not point a telescope at some supernova remnant and look for any lines that do not match the known elements. If stable super-heavy elements exist, then they would probably be made in supernovae and the remnant would show signs of those elements, no?
- wrs 5y agoNot answering your question, but fun fact: helium was discovered by seeing an unexplained emission line in our own sun’s spectrum, which is where it got its name.
- simcop2387 5y agoI think the main issue it's that they would need to be made in sufficient quantity to show up in the Spectra of the novas and collision. The heavier they are the fewer will be made, making detection harder and harder. You'd also need to calculate all the lines for a given element at the various energy levels to determine if a set of lines match, and that gets nontrivial pretty quickly
- BitwiseFool 5y agoAh, that makes sense. Thank you.
- btilly 5y agoI think that that issue is secondary to the fact that the island of stability has predicted half-lives in the range of a year or two. So in order to look for that spectrum we have to have supernovae that have happened very recently and close enough for us to make out the spectrum in what remains.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoSeeing such number (and knowing nil about particle physics), I imagine someone cataloging the fallen leaves in autumn using low-res pictures. They are the same kind of leaf, but from different angles it looks like there's several kinds.
- ephimetheus 5y agoHadrons are composite particles so that’s exactly what this is. Different quark combinations. Back in the day people didn’t know and we’re quite unhappy with such a Zoo of particles.
- dannypovolotski 5y agoAm I the only one who misread the word "Hadrons"?
- bedhead 5y agoMy dyslexia had me thinking this was a sexual thing...
- lacker 5y agoI wonder if this is like ancient astronomers finding more and more epicycles.
- at_a_remove 5y agoNot especially, no. This is more akin to finding new molecules (hadrons), given known kinds of atoms (quarks).
- eddieh 5y agoNah, they're more like elements, but they're made of quarks not nucleons (protons/neutrons). I think the modern equivalent of epicycles is string theory. Find an inconstancy? No problem, add a dimension.
- s1dev 5y agoThat's not quite true. The dimension of the ambient space is constrained to be exactly 10 (in strings, 11 in M-theory) by consistency considerations. The important question is what is the geometry of the extra dimensions, if they exist. You need a large amount of energy to probe the extra dimensions, so it would appear just like some extra particles in the theory to a low energy observer. (Of course, the observer has to have enough energy to find even those particles). The standard model also has seemingly arbitrary particle content and interactions without much to constrain it. A majority of the particle content was put in the theory by hand after seeing a failure of the theory. In strings, this choice has been moved from the theory to the initial data (choice of geometry of the extra dimensions).
- eddieh 5y agoI'm not a theoretical physicist and only took a few math courses beyond which were required by my major, but it was my understanding that mainstream string theories have 10, 11, and 26 dimensions, but I recall, and could be wrong, that there can be infinitely many string theories with 4 dimensions being the lower bound and some unspecified upper bound. But I'm not an expert and I was mostly being hyperbolic with my original reply. Corrections are always welcome.
- rpz 5y agoHorray. How about figuring out a way to lower the hadrons discovered per dollar ratio and maybe i'll be more excited
- capableweb 5y ago> ... per dollar ratio ... LHC - Large Hadron Collider - Geneva, Switzerland - Most likely CHF/EUR. Not sure why you would care how much is being spent on it.
- tester756 5y ago>Not sure why you would care how much is being spent on it. It's easiest way to see how "big" something is
- karmakaze 5y agokm, kg (or if you prefer MeV/c^2) work just fine.
- tester756 5y agoby "big" I didn't only mean physical size, the amount of effort needed / similar too e.g quant computer
- capableweb 5y agoHm, you could also just look at the Wikipedia page, it has all the measurements you're looking for most likely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
- fridif 5y agoIf it was the military or police, would you suddenly care about what their budget was?
- capableweb 5y ago
- webwielder2 5y agoCould it be that string theory is correct, insofar as the universe is written in spaghetti code?
- King-Aaron 5y agoThis might be an extremely laymen-level question, but have any discoveries from the LHC trickled down into consumer/commercial/industrial level technologies so far?
- jfoutz 5y agoThe information sharing tools they developed back at the start got some popularity. I imagine you're wondering about newer things and actual discoveries. I just couldn't resist the setup.
- anfilt 5y agoLots of the designs used by CERN are basically open source hardware some more useful than other depending on how niche it is. Heck CERN helps with KiCADs development which has benefited numerous hobbyists. Like here is a voltmetere someone built using designs from CERN. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D28uSzCs7-k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D28uSzCs7-k
- King-Aaron 5y agoThat was an extremely satisfying video to watch. Thanks for that!
- magicalhippo 5y agoAs others pointed out, the work done to build and support the actual machine has led to a lot of positive contributions back to society. However you asked for discoveries, so I imagine you were thinking of the stuff the LHC has been searching for. And I think in that regard it's safe to say no. And from what I understand, there's not a huge expectation for that to happen. The reason being that the LHC is a high-energy particle physics search, while almost everything we make or use is made of condensed matter[1] and low-energy particles, an area where we know pretty good how individual particles behave. In the condensed matter field though, where many-body particle interactions dominate, there's a lot of interesting work that might have applications. As an example, a relatively recent discovery is superconductivity in twisted graphene layers[2]. I still think LHC and similar should be built. After all, a lot of good comes out of the technology required to build and operate them, and there is a chance we'll learn something with significant impact. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics [2]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-twisted-graphene-became-the-big-thing-in-physics-20190430/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-twisted-graphene-became-t...
- kristianp 5y agoThe FCC [0] is looking at 100TeV vs the current LHC 14TeV. Is it a big enough improvement to find anything new? I feel like CERN (LHC) is becoming like Nasa, funding massive job projects (space shuttle) that can't compete with a motivated private enterprise or other disruptor (SpaceX) that works out what is needed to make real progress (in SpaceX's case real reusability and methalox fuel). [0] http://fcc-cdr.web.cern.ch/ http://fcc-cdr.web.cern.ch/
- vagrantJin 5y agoIn defense of government space agencies, Nasa operates on a wholly different regulatory framework[0] They can't do as they please on hiring, subcontracting, suppliers because that money has oversight from treasury and congress. It's taxpayer money. Its like working with one hand tied behind your back. Not to mention that if a political mandate comes through, and it says stop all work on the space shuttle, no matter what progress you've made or what new materials are coming out or whether computer simulations are an order of magnitude better - you have to stop. SpaceX is merely a launch alternative. The shuttle program has already paid its dues and paved the road. [0](https://www.nasa.gov/emd/policy-regulations-and-guidance https://www.nasa.gov/emd/policy-regulations-and-guidance)