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| bradsercombe 2002-08-04 20:47:29 | Study Predicting Mystery Particles Gets Further Support In an ongoing quest to detect invisible and unknown matter, scientists associated with a Brookhaven National Lab experiment announced yesterday they'd confirmed their results of a year ago that showed particles dancing with unknown counterparts. Unfortunately, the fat lady has yet to sing an accompanying subatomic tune. In the original study, the scientists put tiny known particles called muons into a magnetic field and watched their behavior. The muons danced wild jigs that could only be explained if other, unknown matter was affecting them. The new results, based on data collected in 2000, support the earlier study with twice the precision, say scientists in international project. Meanwhile, theorists have been revising their theories over the past year and said they aren't sure what should be happening to the muons. So it remains unclear Brookhaven work, which if correct would alter the Standard Model of particle physics, explains anything. "While not definitive, this new result is consistent with the presence of effects which are outside of the Standard Model," said Boston University physicist Lee Roberts. "Further work to clarify this hint of something new is essential, nevertheless this result is very interesting and provocative." If the fat lady ever sings favorably on the Brookhaven project, then strange new physics might be possible, such as supersymmetry, a theory that predicts the existence of companion particles for all the known particles in the universe. |
| pben 2002-08-06 15:09:29 | One of my habits is to visit the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site. Today's picture is a picture of the Brookhaven National lab and something about moun wobble? You can see the picture at: Wobble |
| Stephen Brooks 2002-08-06 15:50:16 | Do they think these supersymmetric partner particles make up some of the 20-30% of our universe that is in the form of dark matter? "As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline" |
| bradsercombe 2002-08-06 17:51:44 | Whoah what a picture! It makes the stargate look like a toy. It was very interesting to read about the physics being explored at the moment. Thanks heaps for the link! Brad. |
| pben 2002-08-06 20:49:54 | The cover story in Scientific American this month is on dark matter. The authors say that there isn't such a think as dark matter. Instead they argue that gravity changes at very low acceleration. I have some doubts but what do I know, I draw pictures for a living  |
