LHC reports discovery of its first new particle!!

reply to post by prevenge


I'm guessing the "beauty" quark is an alternate name for the "bottom" quark, since there are already up and down quarks... adding top and bottom quarks seems like a good way to design a system of nomenclature destined for confusion.

That would be my guess, at least.

And, as far as I understand... the names for the quarks are almost purely arbitrary and not really linked to their mechanics (perhaps a cursory link in a few cases - but I think it's mostly just an arbitrary thing).

Originally posted by prevenge
reply to post by definity

 

cool thanks for the 'particle article' heheh .. bu-bum ..smash!


what's so beautiful about this quark though...

not sure, good point! I spose the beauty of it is like a puss filled spot, you can only notice it if your alive.

'beauty quark' and a 'beauty anti-quark'
Common now... their just making stuff up now!

J/K

Here is a list of particles if anyone is interested...

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by phishyblankwaters

No clue if you can even get them, I've only ever seen them in documentaries showing Fermilab but CERN has the same stuff on a larger scale. Here's one from google image search, but some of the ones I've seen in TV shows are much nicer. Each one of those colored lines would be a particle and it's trajectory, I believe. here's one closer to what i was talking about

Thanks for the images. Pretty much what I expected being they make no sense to me.

I have always felt that in searching for the smallest thing, we will come to realize that size goes on in both directions to infinity. No Smallest thing or largest thing will ever be discovered as it probably a perpetual loop.

i wouldn't be too worried about the end of the world.... Now, the scientists do have an understanding of what they are dealing with, the mystery revolves around why, quantum mechanics is strange and things just don't make sense. Like entanglement. With quantum entanglement you have 2 particles that are "entangled" meaning if you interact with particle A, particle B responds (I think it's the anti particle so it would be an opposite response?) And here's where it gets weird. time and space have no effect on this, the particles can be lightyears away, yet react INSTANTLY, as if they are sending information to the other particle faster than light. This is a real thing and is completely confusing, but they can still make predictions and test them based on their limited understanding. Take gravity. We know it's real, we can measure it's effects, and do all sorts of things, letting us understand that mass distorts space time which creates the gravity effect. But we actually have zero understanding of WHY things have mass, and also the mechanics of how gravity works. On earth, if you hold a ball out and release it, it drops because of gravity. But WHY? What mechanical process allows this to happen? Isn't that the kicker? With LHC looking for the Higgs, we might finally understand how gravity actually works, one of the first physical laws discovered, yet we know little about it. Way back when, the atom was the smallest particle. Then we split it and low and behold, you've got a nucleus, protons, electrons, etc. So then electrons became the smallest. until we built a machine to smash them together, and once we did, we found tons of new particles. I'm honestly hoping the search for the Higgs reveals a new layer, more things to discover, more physics! finding the last piece in the puzzle means there's not much left to learn.

Thanks for the physics lesson. No one still has ever seen an atom not to mention the theoretical much smaller particles. We can only measure properties of these and gravity is not giving up it's secret. It's simple:

Gravity is consciousness, an awareness of self. Now how do you measure or explain that?

if you want to monitor the LHC live (not now, winter shutdown), you can view it here :
meltronx.com...

lots of info and pics here too:
www.lhcportal.com...