Friday, April 08, 2011

Physics is weirder than we thought

Another day, another atom smashed - wait, what the heck is that?
The boffins as the Tevetron in Batavi, IL, are used to smashing a proton and and antiproton together and seeing what comes out. They have a pretty goof idea of what to expect. Or they thought they did. Sometimes they are getting a spray of lightweight particles no one recognizes. The result has to be duplicated by other physicists, but the presence of an unidentified type no one expected (and no, it's not the long-sought Higgs boson) has scientists using words like "breakthrough" and "revolutionary." In short, they may have to rewrite the books about what matter does at the subatomic level, which has all kinds of implications.

No comments: