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Newsletter:
Doomed U.S. Lab Announces Its Last Major Discovery
by
Robert Piccioni
April 20, 2011
In my March 5th
newsletter, I noted with great disappointment that the U.S. Government
announced the closure of the last American particle accelerator, thus
conceding world-leadership in cutting-edge physics. The Tevatron at
Fermi National Lab is scheduled to be shut down in September.
For decades the
Tevatron was the world’s preeminent high-energy physics research
facility and the site of most of the major discoveries that advanced
particle physics. With the last three U.S. presidents unwilling to
continue supporting such research, it now seems likely the Tevatron
will be America’s high-water mark in fundamental physics.
But, even as the
focus of cutting-edge physics shifts to Europe, the Tevatron may
uncover one last spectacular discovery.
This month, the
“CDF” group at Fermi Lab announced the discovery of something totally
unexpected—the very best kind of new scientific discovery. CDF found a
new particle with a mass-energy of 144 GeV, over 150 times more massive
than a proton. One such particle is almost as massive as an entire atom
of tungsten. And they didn’t just see one of these new particles; they
found over 250 of them. It is even possible that the particle is a
boson and the carrier of a new force of nature.
In the graph
below, the red line indicates what is expected from all known physics
(W and Z bosons) and the blue line highlights the extra “events” from
decays of the new particles. The odds that these events are statistical
flukes are computed to be 1 in 1300.
Blue hump indicates 253 detected newly
discovered particles.
Red line indicates events
from currently known W and Z bosons.
The data and the analysis presented in their scientific paper are
highly convincing, in my opinion. While physicists always want more
data (who wouldn’t), many previous breakthrough discoveries were
announced with far weaker evidence.
The CDF group says that the production rate of these new particles is
far too high to be the long-sought Higgs boson. Physicists quote the
ease of making any type of particle in terms of “barns”—the analogy
being that it is easier to hit a big target than a small one. A uranium
atom is the biggest imaginable target for a particle physicist, so that
is said to be 1 barn—anyone can hit the broad side of a uranium atom. A
square one trillionth of an inch on each side is over 6 barns,
positively humongous. For these new particles, CDF says the target size
is 4 trillionth of a barn, whereas theory predicts the Higgs is 300
times harder to produce. Either the Higgs theory needs revision or CDF
has found something totally unexpected and beyond the Standard Model of
particle physics.
Since the CDF announcement, theoretical physicists have been
frantically publishing new theories and revising old ones; at least one
new conjecture is coming out every day. The new idea I like best is
that the new particle (named X, in an act devoid of originality) is the
force-carrying boson of a new fifth force of nature (the known four
forces are gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear, and weak) that
links normal matter to dark matter. If so, the machine the U.S.
Government decided wasn’t worth keeping will have made the most
important discovery in particle physics in at least 40 years.
As a study in the evolution of particle physics, it’s interesting to
compare the scope of the CDF (Collider Detector FermiLab) effort with
my own thesis experiment 40 years ago, both of which are typical of
their times. Eight physicists contributed to my 1971 experiment, which
took about 4 years to complete. CDF has nearly 500 physicists from
nearly 100 universities and 17 countries; it has been ongoing for 16
years. The CDF detector weighs 5000 tons and exceeds 40 feet in height,
length, and depth. A portion of this device is shown in the image below.
I am thrilled that Fermi Lab’s Tevatron has defied its detractors and
instead of going out with a whimper, has given science one more great
bang.
Partial view of CDF
detector at Fermi Lab Tevatron.
My thanks to Richard Conn Henry and Bill Kraham for sending me the CDF
report.
Regards,
Robert
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dr Robert
Piccioni,
Author of "Everyone's
Guide to Atoms, Einstein, and the Universe"
and "
Can Life Be
Merely An Accident?"
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