Physics world buzzing over faster-than-ever particles

The full article can be found at http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=2d2333fc-1e2a-4763-acb1-b265c2a0860b&k=14299

How in the world did they measure THAT? It sounds like the source of pure energy or something.

Still not quite as high as the national debt, though, is it?

Seriously, though, that's pretty damned amazing.

is something not being conserved here?

charge? spin?

although matter-antimatter parity is one thing that's obviously NOT conserved. It still seems odd.

a cab driver honking his horn after the light turns green.

on the subatomic levels.

They've pretty much figured out that "matter" is just loops of energy with different spin and different properties.

if you want the news straight from the source.

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/DZeroB_s.html

BTW, Fermilab is a public access DOE lab outside of Chicago (Batavia, IL) and is worth visiting if you are ever in the area.

That's the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University in California. My grandfather was one of the engineers who helped to design the cooling system.

Hmmm.

:)

It only encourages the current administration to raise the debt ceiling to that number.

Also, I wonder if people in Kansas will be allowed to read about this.

A meson, such as the B_s, is an unusual particle made up of both matter and antimatter-one quark and one antiquark. The neutral B_s meson is composed of a bottom (or "B") antiquark and a strange ("s") quark.

:D

It's not made of much of anything, unless you count "energy", and we don't really know what energy is made of either, it's fundamental. All we REALLY know is these things seem to obey certain equations when we experiment with them.

:hi:

I never heard of a combination of a quark and and anti-quark, much less that it changes between states. I would be fascinated to know why this combination is able to express itself both as matter and anti-matter, and how the researchers can tell (maybe it's the result of how it's measured).

The so-called "flavorless" mesons are made from a quark - antiquark pair of the same type (*). "Flavored" mesons have two different quarks. I will try to find some info, but I don't think the quarks in flavored mesons both must be matter or anti-matter, and that the observed state-change in this and other mesons is the result of a quark-antiquark pair of different types.

(*)I probably have the nomenclature wrong, but there are six types of quarks, grouped in three sets of two. They are up/down, strange/charm, and top/bottom. Quarks make a class of particles called fermions, which include protons and neutrons. Most of the fermions in the universe seem to made up of up/down quarks, although more exotic fermions have been made.

If the mass of an object approaching the speed of light increases is this particle affected? As I recall objects increase in mass to near infinite as they get closer to light speed. I think that this effect was one of the barriers to at or near light speed travel. If this particle is close to "light speed" is it affected? If not, why? Is it a repudiation of a part of the theory of relativity? Could this be a key to near light speed travel? Has it been to long since my last physics class?

Edited for spelling.

If a particle is merely changing state, like this one, the delta of positional change (ie speed as you are using it) is not a factor.

That's pretty weird, isn't it? I didn't notice anybody in that article saying "this is pretty weird." Am I missing something?

There are other particles that flip-flop (and not all of them are politicians.) Where this one is unusual is that it occurs much faster than any other we know about. Noteable, but not weird.

I dare say that the more you've studied quantum physics, the more likely you are to just nod your head and say, "Cool!" when stuff like this is discovered.