Mysterious Particle Found After Decades of Searching

[onager]

Meet the Majorana fermion! This was posted in Science over the weekend, but I just saw it on Yahoo and thought I'd re-up it here:

An elusive particle that is its own antiparticle may have been found, and, if confirmed, would be the first time a phenomenon predicted decades ago has been seen in a real system.

Some researchers suggest that in the future, this mysterious particle called a Majorana fermion could be useful in carrying bits of information in quantum computers...

Until now, the only suggestion of the particle's existence was a theory posed by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937, who predicted the Majorana fermion.

http://news.yahoo.com/mysterious-particle-found-decades-searching-130005728.html

Ain't it purty?

[frankie]

1. sort of

Technically, they created a "quasiparticle", which is a confluence of inter-particle effects that act together in the same way that a real particle should.

Cool result, but not the same as finding a new standalone particle.

[Adsos Letter]

2. Now if only they could find my skullcandy earphones which disappeared over the weekend...

But no, they spend their time messing around with this "mysterious particle" stuff.

[laconicsax]

4. I have a foolproof method for finding missing headphones:

Buy a new pair. You'll find the old one within a day or two, then return the new pair.

[Goblinmonger]

3. It is reading stuff like this that makes me hope that scientists find

Ulysses by James Joyce as incomprehensible as I find this stuff about particles.

It is pretty cool, though.