3 ms·
>The only way to see such a particle would be to hit it precisely with an even smaller particle and get it to bounce back. Bounce back from what force? Whateve
by whatshisface 5y ago
>The only way to see such a particle would be to hit it precisely with an even smaller particle and get it to bounce back.
Bounce back from what force? Whatever forces would make it interact with a single particle would make it interact with a detector, which is itself made out of particles.
They say the extra-stable tetraquark would only be susceptible to decay via the weak force, which means you'd have to wait around until it decayed, and then you'd often be able to see some charged remnants.
- akomtu 5y agoCan such tetraquarks form semi stable macroscopic structures like atoms? For example, if they aren't completely neutral, a group of them would be able to maybe attract an electron and become a quasiatom of some sort.
- whatshisface 5y agoThe stable-to-strong-decay species they're talking about, bb anti-u anti-d, would have a charge of (-1 -1 -2 -1)/3 = -5/3 times the electron charge. I guess its antiparticle would be positive, so maybe an electron could hang around for a while. I don't know how long that tetraquark is expected to live, though.
- FreeFull 5y agoThe charge would actually be (-2 + 1 - 1 - 1)/3 = -1 of a proton's charge. There isn't any physically viable combination of quarks that would produce a non-integer charge. The article mentions the bb tetraquark can only decay through the weak force, but I'm not sure how long it'd live either.