Posted on 03/24/2021 10:18:58 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Update (24 March 2021): The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment is still insisting there's a flaw in our best model of particle physics.
As explained below, previous results comparing the collider's data with what we might expect from the Standard Model threw up a curious discrepancy by around 3 standard deviations, but we needed a lot more information to be confident it truly reflected something new in physics.
Newly released data have now pushed us closer to that confidence, putting the results at 3.1 sigma; there's still a 1 in 1,000 possibility that what we're seeing is the result of physics just being messy, and not of a new law or particle.
(31 August 2018): Past experiments using CERN's super-sized particle-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), hinted at something unexpected. A particle called a beauty meson was breaking down in ways that just weren't lining up with predictions.
A small group of physicists took the collider's data on beauty meson (or b meson for short) disintegration, and investigated what might happen if they swapped one assumption regarding its decay for another that assumed interactions were still occurring after they transformed.
Even the most stable of mesons fall apart after hundredths of a second. The framework we use to describe the construction and decay of particles – the Standard Model – describes what we should see when different mesons split up.
The beauty meson is a down quark connected to a bottom anti-quark. When the particle's properties are plugged into the Standard Model, b-meson decay should produce pairs of electrons and positrons, or electron-like muons and their opposites, anti-muons.
This electron or muon outcome should be 50-50. But that's not what we're seeing. Results are showing far more of the electron-positron products than muon-anti-muons.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
Science loves to smash stuff together to see how it works.
This may not always be the best approach.
Imagine a primitive person seeing a cell phone. If they smash it into small pieces that will not be very helpful in determining how it works.
;-)
There are probably a lot of flaws in the current model of particle physics.
“They involve complicated interactions of virtual particles....”
Sooo.... does that mean that they really don’t exist?
You might break down quickly too if a society of primarily homely mesons was trying to oppress your outcomes.
I’m waiting for the Unicorn particle, then we will have the complete theory.
OK Go back to the sand box.
Oh, great, now I guess I can flunk it again.
These short-lived particles (mesons) are regularly created in the upper atmosphere via collision with atmospheric particles and incoming cosmic rays from space.
Although they have such an incredibly short life span after creation, more of them manage to make it to the ground and are picked up by detectors than are expected. This is because they are traveling at a comparatively high proportion of the speed of light and so their sense of time from our perspective is slowed down enough such that they can survive long enough to complete the trip.
This observation has been used as a confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity. The phenomenon is known as Time Dilation. Interestingly, from the mesons' frame of reference, it is the *distance traveled* that changes. It sees the distance from the point of creation to the earth's surface shortened by an associated phenomenon known as Length Contraction. Both are parts of the Theory of Relativity, as seen relative to the two reference frames.
***** BEST RESPONSE OF THE WEEK *****
Author made statement in article that we have “seen things in nature like dark matter”...uh..no..havent “seen” or visualized dark matter yet.
“This electron or muon outcome should be 50-50. But that’s not what we’re seeing. Results are showing far more of the electron-positron products than muon-anti-muons.”
“You might break down quickly too if a society of primarily homely mesons was trying to oppress your outcomes.” ~gnarledmaw
Once the muon-antis are properly mated with the homely mesons, we should have some antisocial ugly Masons pop into existence.
There is nothing new under the sun or in physics.
Only tons and tons of stuff that you dont know.
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