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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEvidence suggests subatomic particles could defy the standard model
This, is a BFD!!!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150827121919.htm
Date:
August 27, 2015
Source:
University of Maryland
Summary:
A team of physicists has found new hints of particles -- leptons, to be more precise -- being treated in strange ways not predicted by the Standard Model. The discovery could prove to be a significant lead in the search for non-standard phenomena.
According to a Standard Model concept called "lepton universality," which assumes that leptons are treated equally by all fundamental forces, the decay to the tau lepton and the muon should both happen at the same rate, once corrected for their mass difference. However, the team found a small, but notable, difference in the predicted rates of decay, suggesting that as-yet undiscovered forces or particles could be interfering in the process.
KatyMan
(4,214 posts)you get what you give...
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Amazing universe, this.
Rex
(65,616 posts)There has to be something out there like a hidden graviton, that makes up the rest (and MOST) of the Universe!
Xipe Totec
(43,892 posts)Well we know it did not come from his less esteemed elders!
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)What? is the big question.
Avalux
(35,015 posts)I think there's a connection between dark energy and consciousness....a place science usually doesn't go but I think they're going to converge.
dieter
(94 posts)There do seem to be connections we cannot explain with our current understanding of this universe (must allow for the multiverse these days).
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)something that is simply beyond our comprehension as 3D entities or something that does not want to be found!
OR
This really is a elaborate computer program and the reason we cannot find anything else is because we are all made up of photons and there is nothing else 'there' there. A glitch in the Matrix per se.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)that the reality we see and experience is an impossibly elaborate hologram. I haven't read any original sources about this but Brian Greene discusses it at some length in "The Hidden Reality" in his overview of multiverse theories. Not sure that I buy that particular brainwave.
I'm currently reading "A Different Universe" by Robert Laughlin, who's a Nobel laureate in physics. He seems to put a lot of weight on the theory of "emergence" which, as I probably misunderstand it, explains how classical, Newtonian sorts of things, like structure and matter, emerge out of the quantum chaos out of a kind of necessity. Very thought-provoking.
Rex
(65,616 posts)It seems that existence does have a purpose derived from sheer necessity to either a)exist because of the insane odds against existing b)emerge due to the need to exist to opposse an abyssal void of non-existence.
My own speculation, based on nothing but my own brain leads me to believe we are living inside something that has no outside. Something beyond our understanding and that is okay. One day maybe.
This is why I love sci-fi so much.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)actually sums up most advanced theoretical constructs of the universe very nicely. Even if there are other universes, and I think that as likely as not, they exist in a "place" that is forever inaccessible and hence not "outside" of the universe which we inhabit. There's nothing outside of space, and if you think about it, there really can't be, at least in a four-dimensional spacetime (three of space, one of time).
Rex
(65,616 posts)then it was our galaxy, now we are tiny sub atomic particles in what is the Known Universe. What is in the Unknown Universe is actually 99.99% of what exists and we cannot even observe it. What are we? The tiny almost non existant part of everything that we know.
I love this stuff.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)fulfilling the task of building superior robots as replacements for us. Far more complex than R vs. D!
Rex
(65,616 posts)discover they are just building more evolved robots and what that saying will be called by the even better robots!
"Progress"? "Evolution"? "Crappy Window50 Upgrade!"
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)like Bender did in "Obsoletely Fabulous."
"Oh Lord, he's made of wood." - Turanga Leela
Rex
(65,616 posts)Futurama is great, every show needs a homer and bart simpson. I think bender is both and a better robot!
SHIT...this is reminding me of the GMO/organtic DU wars now! You think it will come down to organic verses GM robots?
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)jimlup
(7,968 posts)for awhile now. Hope it holds up!
hunter
(38,339 posts)They're almost as bad as two year olds.
You just can't tell them how to behave.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)They found the Higgs boson a couple of years back IIRC, so who knows what might be next. The particle zoo is getting pretty crowded.
Avalux
(35,015 posts)This is exciting, and more evidence to support quantum theory.
Statistical
(19,264 posts)The standard model is built from quantum theory. It is out understanding of how all these particles even those which had not yet been discovered interact. Of course it was just a model but for a long time things fit that model pretty well. Except these ones are not following the rules so it means our model is incomplete.
Avalux
(35,015 posts)Now what?
Statistical
(19,264 posts)to see how the standard model can be expanded to fit these "troublesome" particles.
hunter
(38,339 posts)... and maybe even more arguers hoping it's some kind of subtle experimental error, leaving the existing model fully intact.
I suspect if we humans do "break" the standard model, the new theory will be as repugnant to modern physicists and mathematicians as quantum theory and relativity were to the "classical" Newtonian physicists. It will probably be repugnant to ordinary people too, in the same way evolutionary theory is repugnant to young earth creationists.
For now, it looks to me as if there is no such thing as time, and not in any metaphorical or "woo" way either. I figure both faster-than-light travel and slower-than-light travel are impossible. It's all light. On the grandest scale of this universe, everything looks pretty much the same wherever or whenever you go, never twice the same but never much different either. 13.772 billion years from now the universe still looks about that old, just as it did 13.772 billion years ago. Wherever and whenever you go, there you are. Both the future and the past of any local place, forward or backward, dissolve into clouds of probability, but are never the solid reality we humans imagine our own "real life" journeys are, from non-existence into life and back into non-existence.
Which is the greatest reason we should cherish one another.