Physicists Discover "Violation of a Fundamental Symmetry of the Universe"

i09.com ^ | November 3, 2010 | Staff

[Huebolt]

Strange indeed. A quick check shows neutrinos to be both massless and yet travel at the speed of light. At the same time, they must have mass in order to oscillate their flavor. Neutrino flux also affects the decay rate of isotopes - the half life used for carbon dating for instance. That blows up that technique for dating past events. Bottom line, the more they know, the less they know about it.

Special department of unobservable phenomenon kudos here.

[Aevery_Freeman]

Wow, I've never seen anyone get so excited about a little violation of charge-parity symmetry.

So glad to have made your day.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The article actually says:

And we may be a few steps closer to understanding all the matter we haven't yet discovered, and have therefore labeled "dark."

Actually, it's called "dark" matter because it does not interact with electromagnetic fields (like light). Our preception of the universe is primarily through electromagnetic radiation or the effects of electronic interactions (touch) and, ultimately, sound. (Sound is only explainable in terms of electronic properties of matter.) Neutrinos were originally "discovered" in the negative: to account for the missing mass/energy and momentum in subatomic particle interactions. "Dark" matter was never any more mysterious than positing particles that behaved in some ways like neutrinos, but weren't like neutrinos, at least like the ones we know about. (Dark matter was "discovered" in an attempt to account for gravitational effects not explainable by the observed mass in the universe, i.e., discovered in the negative.)

[Red Badger]

No, mesons are now on par with the neutrino.

They are now parmesons..............

[DocRock]

I'm still waiting from someone to explain this symmetry of hexagonal rings on Saturn's poles. Talk about violations of symmetry!

[Aevery_Freeman]

By its “oscillations” (no stripper jokes, please).

[Erasmus]

Will it someday be discovered that we never really existed?

What will we do on that day?

Since we wouldn't exist, by definition, nothing.

&le:}B^)

[Aevery_Freeman]

Funny and smart. Good combination.

May the Schwartz be with you.

[GOYAKLA]

2 x 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2

[ontap]

Funny thing after I read this I remember thinking the same thing the other day and pondering on whether I should publish it or not. I finally opted to go get a banana split instead. Obviously I made the right decision!!!

[starlifter]

You thought wrong.

[RegulatorCountry]

>And we may be a few steps closer to understanding all the matter we haven't yet discovered, and have therefore labeled "dark."

Here there be dragons.

[battlecry]

Hexagonal cells are the result of convection. They are common and you can make them in your stove.

[GeronL]

Like the story the other week that their “red shift” theory doesn’t apply to Quasars, the idea has been resisted for a decade but its pretty much confirmed they aren’t nearly as far away or moving as fast as the “red shift” says. (Probably because those things spin so fast - my theory)

[ontap]

They’re really good with chocolate chips I hear!!!

[STD]

Please, can anyone tell me whats to fear from the European collider? What do people think?

[Doc Savage]

That’s nothing! I’ve discovered a ‘dark matter’ black hole, something I’ve dubbed an ‘Asshole’ living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

[eggman]

Maybe it's a buttino, and it's hot, and cold, at the same time!

I think Taco Bell already has that on the menu. Goes right through you too.

[r9etb]

Boone:

MiniBooNE:

[lbryce]

Yes! Absolutely, mind-bogglingly freaky! I'm quite familiar with Saturn's breathlessly inexplicable hexagon first sighted by Voyagers 1 & 2 in the 1980's.

Scientists are more than baffled by what is a seemingly unnatural hexagonal-shaped object that encompasses Saturn's entire north pole.

Imagine scientist's befuddlement when having sighted the first images of the hexagon by Voyagers 1 & 2, the spacecrafts' cameras only pointed at capturing a small glimpse of the hexagon having to wait twenty odd years to getting a look at the hexagon in its entirety! Many of them had thought it was a temporary phenomena in Saturn's clouds only to be shocked it was still there two decades later.