LHC may have come up with some "new" physics!

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Large Hadron Collider researchers have shown off what may be the facility's first "new physics" outside our current understanding of the Universe.

Particles called D-mesons seem to decay slightly differently from their antiparticles, LHCb physicist Matthew Charles told the HCP 2011 meeting on Monday.

The result may help explain why we see so much more matter than antimatter.

The team stresses that further analysis will be needed to shore up the result.

At the moment, they are claiming a statistical certainty of "3.5 sigma" - suggesting that there is less than a 0.05% chance that the result they see is down to chance.

The team has nearly double the amount of data that they have analysed so far, so time will tell whether the result reaches the "five-sigma" level that qualifies it for a formal discovery.

Full story

[Clinton Huxley]

Fuck. I thought we had physics all seen up in 1875?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Fuck. I thought we had physics all seen up in 1875?

There have been one or two minor tweaks since then, old boy.

[klr]

First faster than light neutrinos, now this. They're up to no good in that part of the world.

[Clinton Huxley]

Fuck. I thought we had physics all seen up in 1875?

There have been one or two minor tweaks since then, old boy.

Damned bunch of stamp collectors and parsons. I'd thrash the lot of them.

[Schneibster]

That's really interesting because I think there were expectations we weren't going to see anything even at LHC energies until we got enough data to see T mesons.

What they're doing, technically, is measuring the quark mixing angles in the CKM matrix. The interesting thing is that this means the matter/antimatter imbalance need not have preceded charm quarks falling out of equilibrium. If this result is confirmed to six sigma there will be some shedding of inaccurate cosmologies shortly.

In addition, if this result is true, it would fulfill the final Sakharov criterion to allow the matter-antimatter imbalance.

Great stuff, XC. Thanks.

ETA: The super-nitty-gritty for those who get that stuff: http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2011/11 ... maybe.html

[apophenia]

Physicists are always breakin' shit. Why can't they just leave well enough alone.

[Clinton Huxley]

I blame Bohr.

[JimC]

If there is a Multiverse, and our Universe is one of many continuously budding off it, perhaps the symmetry breaking event that lead to the imbalance was the equivalent of a metastable pencil falling to the left rather than the right...

[JimC]

Fuck. I thought we had physics all seen up in 1875?

There have been one or two minor tweaks since then, old boy.

Damned bunch of stamp collectors and parsons. I'd thrash the lot of them.

I teach my lads good solid Newtonian mechanics. Nothing more needed to analyse the path of a cricket ball...

[Clinton Huxley]

Fuck. I thought we had physics all seen up in 1875?

There have been one or two minor tweaks since then, old boy.

Damned bunch of stamp collectors and parsons. I'd thrash the lot of them.

I teach my lads good solid Newtonian mechanics. Nothing more needed to analyse the path of a cricket ball...

Well said, sir! The young minds of the Empire are in safe hands.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Wow, like I completely don't understand the OP, man.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Fuck. I thought we had physics all seen up in 1875?

There have been one or two minor tweaks since then, old boy.

Damned bunch of stamp collectors and parsons. I'd thrash the lot of them.

I teach my lads good solid Newtonian mechanics. Nothing more needed to analyse the path of a cricket ball...

Especially in a country where cricketers only need to count to 47...

[Seth]

First faster than light neutrinos, now this. They're up to no good in that part of the world.

I think God's fucking with them again...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Nothing can go faster than the speed of light."

"Almost nothing can go faster than the speed of light."

"Will you kids stop running in the house!"