Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (April 11, 2006) the precision measurement of extremely rapid transitions between matter and antimatter. As amazing as it may seem, it has been known for 50 years that very special species of subatomic particles can make spontaneous transitions between matter and antimatter. In this exciting new result, CDF physicists measured the rate of the matter-antimatter transitions for the Bs (pronounced "B sub s") meson, which consists of the heavy bottom quark bound by the strong nuclear interaction to a strange anti-quark, a staggering rate that challenges the imagination - 3 trillion times per second.Read the press release here. If you are a little smart you can read this. If you are really stupid or really really smart, you could read this. I am actually crazy enough to sit on in the Physics department after class to listen to random talks on topics I really don't know jackshit about. I wandered into a special seminar convened to announce the result. It was a talk by Kevin Pitts. That guy was so excited and totally wired during the talk. You could see it. Like you have just won the lottery or ..the Nobel Prize. The only problem is that there have been about 700 scientists from 27 institutions involved in the project.
PS: Regular programming will commence very shortly :).
9 comments:
FYI press release link no work...
~ alraqs
fixed it :)
Matter and Antimatter???!
Errm!
Pretty interesting stuff... but there are some major gaps in my knowledge...
1) I know of six flavours of quarks: up, down, top, bottom, strange, charmed. Are there any more? Do each of these have an anti-flavour or is antimatter just a different combination of the same quarks?
2) What is this Super-Symmetry theory anyway?
3) Is it just these B-s mesons that exhibit such dual behaviour or do other, more common leptons act the same way?
I have a couple of hundred more questions, but I'll settle for these for now :)
I think I don't have any major gaps in my knowledge. There is just one huge gaping hole :)..
These things are immensely complex. Even among seasoned physicists, theoretical physics is not for the faint hearted.
Essentially there are 4 forces - electromagnetic, strong, weak and gravity. Right now we have theories for each, consistent, but nothing that describes everything in a single framework. Thats grand unified theory.
To fit the current phenomena, the model has all kinds of parameters and assumptions. The role of any good model is in addition to fitting current data - it should make predictions.
One of the models is called the Standard Model. Which I would think is the less exotic of the models out there. It makes a lot of predictions
- It calls for the existence of anti matter
- It calls for the existence of a number of yet undiscovered particles
- It predicts a number of phenomena
You get a Nobel Prize when
- You predict something in your model or fill in an existing.
- Someone later finds that to be correct.
In this project thye have managed to verify to good accuracy one of the phenomena predicted by the model.
I can't explain it any better - because I don't know better!
Most of the things you hear are highly simplified versions of immensely intricate math.
[primal] :
[intern] yes..hopefully :)
[primal] :)..correction
Uffff... stop telling me things I know already, you haven't answered any of my questions! Ok, I'll go ask some physics person.
Well there is a lot of literature on the net. I have some string theory pdf books. Feel free to ask me if you want them :) he he
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