Tiny Particle With No Charge Discovered

[TobiasTheViking]

After decades of intensive effort by both experimental and theoretical physicists worldwide, a tiny particle with no charge, a very low mass and a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond, dubbed the "axion," has now been detected by the University at Buffalo physicist who first suggested its existence in a little-read paper as early as 1974.

http://www.physorg.com/news84633896.html

I must admit I'm skeptical especially because of this.

As recently as 1999, a project called the CERES experiment at CERN in Geneva again focused on attempting to detect the axion, but that project also was unsuccessful.

The problem, according to Jain, was with their detector, which was electronic, the standard used in high-energy physics experiments today.

"They didn’t know how to handle the detector for short-lived particles," Jain said. "I knew that for this very short-lived particle -- 10-13 seconds -- the detector must be placed very near the interaction point where the collision between the projectile beam and the target takes place so that the produced particle doesn’t run away too far; if it does, it will decay quickly and it will be completely missed.
10-13seconds?? that is an extremely long time.. Though i guess it might be 10^-13seconds they mean.

Well, i can't comprehend exactly what this means(in relation to QP, GR, SR, M-Theory, BB, etc).. so, what do you people smarter than me say?

Sincerely
A Barstard Commie.

[Zygar]

I think you are right 10^-13 seconds is a short-lived particle. 10-13 seconds is pretty long.

[trvlr2]

Unless replicated, it'll be 'cold fusion'.

[Yllanes]

Well, i can't comprehend exactly what this means(in relation to QP, GR, SR, M-Theory, BB, etc)...

It needn't contradict anything. Axions have long been considered as hypothetical candidates for (part of) dark matter. We will have to wait a bit.

[a_unique_person]

What little I know of this, you could be right to be sceptical, (perhaps dubious is a better word). However, a lot of particles don't hang around for long, before they degenerate into other particles.

[Cuddles]

http://www.physorg.com/news84633896.html

I must admit I'm skeptical especially because of this.

10-13seconds?? that is an extremely long time.. Though i guess it might be 10^-13seconds they mean.

Well, i can't comprehend exactly what this means(in relation to QP, GR, SR, M-Theory, BB, etc).. so, what do you people smarter than me say?

Sincerely
A Barstard Commie.

It definately means 10-13. For some reason these things always seem to get messed up when transcribed to the internet, New Scientist and Physics World always do the same. As for whether they've found anything, I'm distinctly sceptical, but I guess we'll know in a few months if anyone manages to replicate it.

[TobiasTheViking]

good good.. if they do mean 10^-13 I'm much less skeptical.

[Pragmatist]

http://www.physorg.com/news84633896.html

I must admit I'm skeptical especially because of this.

10-13seconds?? that is an extremely long time.. Though i guess it might be 10^-13seconds they mean.

Well, i can't comprehend exactly what this means(in relation to QP, GR, SR, M-Theory, BB, etc).. so, what do you people smarter than me say?

Sincerely
A Barstard Commie.

Umm... it clearly says, "a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond". :)

[Big Al]

Umm... it clearly says, "a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond". :)

Yeah - one ten-thousandth of a nanosecond! That's quite a "much"!:)

[ponderingturtle]

What little I know of this, you could be right to be sceptical, (perhaps dubious is a better word). However, a lot of particles don't hang around for long, before they degenerate into other particles.

So? You look at the jets from their decay, just like all the other short life particles.

Now how the hell is something with a existance of 10^-13 seconds supposted to be important to dark matter? It would need to be stable to be interesting

[Yllanes]

Now how the hell is something with a existance of 10^-13 seconds supposted to be important to dark matter? It would need to be stable to be interesting

This particular finding would be inconsistent with the proposed cosmological axions (which would have masses of 10-6-10-2 eV, as opposed to the tens of MeV this one has).

My comment was addressed at this line:


After decades of intensive effort by both experimental and theoretical physicists worldwide, a tiny particle with no charge, a very low mass and a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond, dubbed the "axion," has now been detected by the University at Buffalo physicist who first suggested its existence in a little-read paper as early as 1974.


I thought it was misleading, because it seemed to imply axions were thought of by one guy and ignored by everyone else. The link to the full article didn't work for me when I wrote my post; now I have read it and seen that it explains there has been a lot of theoretical work on them and some attemps to fin them experimentally. I should have read the whole article before posting... Some literature:

This 1977 paper postulates the existence of axions and explains them theoretically, as necessary patches to keep CP invariance.

R. Peccei and H. Quinn, Phys. Rev. Letters 38 (1977), 1440.

We give an explanation of the CP conservation of strong interactions which includes the effects of pseudoparticles. We find it is a natural result for any theory where at least one flavor of fermion acquires its mass through a Yukawa coupling to a scalar field which has nonvanishing vacuum expectation value.


Two papers by Nobel laureates on axions:

S. Weinberg, Phys. Rev. Letters 40 (1978), p 223. Abstract:

It is pointed out that a global U(1) symmetry, that has been introduced to preserve the parity and time-reversal invariance of strong interactions despite the effect of instantons, would lead to a neutral pseudoscalar boson, the 'axion', with mass roughly of order 100 keV - 1 MeV. Experimental implications are discussed.

F. Wilcek, Phys. Rev. Letters 40 (1978), p. 279. Abstract:

The requirement that P and T be approximately conserved in the color gauge theory of strong interactions without arbitrary adjustment of parameters is analyzed. Several possibilities are identified, including one which would give a remarkable new kind of very light, long-lived pseudoscalar boson. [long lived -> around 0.02 seconds]

These three papers have 1675, 1288 and 1221 citations on SPIRES (http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/). In comparison, Jain et al two papers from 1974 have 11 and 3 citations, so I guess the 'little read' comment was justified after all.

Anyway, even if the found mass for axions is surprisingly high, I don't think it has to upset many things. Their mass was more or less a free parameter. The main reason why it was thought the mass would be lower is that a higher mass would have already been detected. This new paper claims that the short lifetime explains why it hadn't been seen before.

[Yllanes]

In case anyone is interested, there's some (quite sceptical) information on this at the n-Categroy Café (http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/12/new_light_particles_discovered.html). Check the comments for more links.

[pgwenthold]

I think you are right 10^-13 seconds is a short-lived particle. 10-13 seconds is pretty long.

Shoot, for a "shortlived particle" even 10^-13 s (10 ps) is fairly long lived. Consider, for example, that reaction transition states have lifetimes* in the femtoseconds and are detectable.

*In fact, they don't have "lifetimes" but they fall apart as fast as the atoms are able to move, which is on the order of femtoseconds

[Yllanes]

Shoot, for a "shortlived particle" even 10^-13 s (10 ps) is fairly long lived. Consider, for example, that reaction transition states have lifetimes* in the femtoseconds and are detectable.

*In fact, they don't have "lifetimes" but they fall apart as fast as the atoms are able to move, which is on the order of femtoseconds

You are right, but in this case the particle is said to be shortlived because its lifetime is much shorter than what was expected. As I said before, axions have long been considered as candidates for cold dark matter, which required a stable particle, as ponderingturtle pointed out.

And anyway, we still have to be careful. The results are not completely convincing, a mere statistical deviation could be the explanation.

[scotth]

Unless replicated, it'll be 'cold fusion'.

Nah. Not much like the cold fusion thing at all.

1) This doesn't have a giant economic potential like cold fusion did.
2) This guy didn't take his find directly to the mass media, bypassing the normal academic publishing channels.


It does need to be replicated. I am sure that many teams are working on that at this moment. I put the odds of success at better than even, in my estimation.