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[mitheor]

Source (CERN)

The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration today announced results that confirm the existence of exotic hadrons – a type of matter that cannot be classified within the traditional quark model.

Hadrons are subatomic particles that can take part in the strong interaction – the force that binds protons inside the nuclei of atoms. Physicists have theorized since the 1960s, and ample experimental evidence since has confirmed, that hadrons are made up of quarks and antiquarks that determine their properties. A subset of hadrons, called mesons, is formed from quark-antiquark pairs, while the rest – baryons – are made up of three quarks.

 

[Rapstah]

Makes sense that some of the other possible combinations of quarks and antiquarks than the normal ones can be stuff too.

 

[Hitokage]

Puns aside, this is exciting stuff.

Or maybe the puns work after all.

 

[ElFly]

Need to see what Peter Woit says of this.

I guess this is something the standard model didn't predict. Should be interesting.

 

[bbdude]

I try to follow science and have no idea what is going on

This is really cool and I have no idea why... maybe we'll get a hoverboard out of it someday

 

[Opiate]

This is very big news. It strongly supports supersymmetry theory.

 

[V_Arnold]

This is very big news. It strongly supports supersymmetry theory.

I read the wikipedia entry on that, and in times like this, I wish I had spent more time on learning high level physics as opposed to grinding in D3 or playing WoW

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Does this have the most impact on quantum mechanics related research?

What are the potential practical applications to this?

 

[Woorloog]

What are the potential practical applications to this?

Unlikely to have any anytime soon. Don't expect warp drives or anti-gravity.

 

[V_Arnold]

Unlikely to have any anytime soon. Don't expect warp drives or anti-gravity.

I hope better. Skeptics usually always say "it wont change a thing" at every scientific improvement/breakthrough/etc. And then someone happens to be more inspired/optimistic, and new things get invented. This is the eternal cycle of scientific revelations.

 

[okayfrog]

That's one quarky particle.

 

[Opiate]

Does this have the most impact on quantum mechanics related research?

Yes.

What are the potential practical applications to this?

None for the foreseeable future. Practical applications of high end physics work don't manifest for decades, if they ever manifest at all.

This is part of the reason why most high end physics is done by governmental bodies rather than corporations; corporations don't typically invest in research that will not produce profitable products for decades or may never do so. There's no way to know, however, until the research is actually done, so somebody has to do this research.

This is completely independent of the argument that understanding the universe is inherently valuable in and of itself.