New Exotic Particle Could Help Explain What Holds Matter Together

A new exotic particle has been hiding out amidst the gobs of data collected by the world's largest atom smasher, physicists have discovered.
The new particle, called Ds3*, is a meson — a type of unstable particle  made of one quark and one antiquark. Quarks are subatomic particles and are the most basic building blocks of matter that make up protons and neutrons. They're held together by the strong interaction, or strong force, that is one of the four fundamental forces in nature. (Electromagnetism, weak interaction and gravity are the other three.) No stable form of matter would exist without the strong interaction holding it together.
To find the new particle, Tim Gershon, a professor of physics at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, and his team used the Dalitz plot analysis. The technique involved waiting for the particle to decay into its most basic elements (quarks) and tracking their motion inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest atom smasher.
This is the first time the technique has been used on data from the LHC, located in a 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) underground tunnel on the border between France and Switzerland. The analysis is possible because physicists now have enough experience with the LHC data and can use it for more complicated analysis. Gershon said there could be even more new particles hidden in the data. [7 Strange Facts About Quarks]
"What we've shown here is that we can use the existing data to discover new particles," Gershon told Live Science. "Hopefully, we've opened a door to a whole new era of these types of studies."
An unusual particle
Quarks come in six different flavors known as up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom, and all six have their own antimatter counterpart called an antiquark. The Ds3* particle is made of one charm antiquark and one strange quark. Quarks also have certain degrees of spin that describe how fast they're moving. Properties like the spin and mass of quarks determine the particle that they fuse together to create. The Ds3* particle is the first particle discovered with a spin of three that contains a charm quark. Its properties make it a highly predictable particle, and Gershon said that's why it's the perfect candidate for studying strong interaction.
Strong interaction is perfectly understood in principle, but physicists have yet to solve the equations that describe it, Gershon said. Strong interaction is such a powerful force that it accounts for more of the mass in an atom than the quarks themselves. The equation behind the force is incredibly complex. Physicists and mathematicians have grappled with it for years, and now, the most sophisticated computers are trying to crack it. The new particle could get scientists closer to solving the equation, Gershon said. [Images: The World's Most Beautiful Equations]
Solving the equation involves figuring out the relationship between a lattice of points of space and time. The idea is to calculate the effects of the interactions between these points. But the force is so strong that the equation has proved unsolvable so far. While calculations have gotten much better, scientists need a benchmark to tell if they're going in the right direction.
"The new particle is more and less perfect for that purpose," Gershon said.
The particle's three spin and inclusion of a charm quark mean it behaves in a predictable way in a lattice, and it's easy to track. Scientists can use the measurements of the new particle and compare it with what they've predicted for the interactions, to see if they're on the right track, Gershon said.
The new particle could also reveal more about the gaping difference between the amount of matter and antimatter in the universe. Antimatter has the opposite electric charge of regular matter, and after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter exploded into the universe in equal amounts, physicists think. But antimatter is rare, and physicists are not sure why matter came to dominate the cosmos. Some think the answer may lie in particles that physicists have yet to discover. These particles, they predict, don't fit inside the realm of the standard model of physics — the laws that govern the universe as scientists understand it so far.
"New mesons don't teach us about extensions of the Standard Model [of physics]," Gershon said. "However, this same technique could be used to search for new particles and sources of asymmetry that are not included in the Standard Model," Gershon added, referring to the asymmetry between the amount of matter and antimatter in the universe.via livescience.com/

Could Gas Explosions Explain Bermuda Triangle Mystery?

The discovery of several mysterious craters in Siberia earlier this year launched a wave of speculation about their origins. Now, a new report suggests an explanation for the holes, claiming it could also be linked to the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.
However, other scientists not involved in the new report say the weird sinkhole mechanism likely doesn't explain vanishings in the Bermuda Triangle — a place that has never been proven to exist.
In July, Siberian reindeer herders discovered a huge crater on the Yamal Peninsula, which means "end of the world." Later, two more gaping holes were found, one in the Taz District and one on the Taymyr Peninsula. But while scientists speculated as to the cause of these weird Siberian holes, their origin remained a mystery.
In July, Russian scientists reported in the journal Nature that the explosive release of gases trapped in the permafrost — known as methane hydrates — likely carved out the enormous sinkholes. Air near the crater's bottom contained unusually high concentrations of methane, they said.
Mysterious happenings
But now, researchers have gone even further, suggesting that methane hydrates could be responsible for the disappearances of ships and aircraft under supposedly mysterious circumstances in the Bermuda Triangle, according to The Siberian Times, which cited a report in Science in Siberia, a weekly publication of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Bermuda Triangle is a region some people say exists in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico; many others dispute its existence. [Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle (Photos)]
But regardless of whether the Bermuda Triangle exists, the idea that methane release could sink ships holds some water, scientists say.
"It is very probable that the similar sinkholes in the ocean were produced [as a result] of decomposing gas hydrates,"said Vladimir Romanovsky, a geophysicist who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but who was not involved in the study.
Methane is normally solid under the crushing pressures of the deep sea, but chunks of the icelike substance can break off and form gas bubbles that rise to the surface.
"Gas hydrate is known to exist along the U.S. North Atlantic continental margin, with a very large province on Blake Ridge (north of the Bermuda Triangle)," Benjamin Phrampus, an Earth scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told Live Science in an email.
Loose bubbles sink ships
In fact, a 2003 study published in the American Journal of Physics found that such bubbles could indeed sink ships, at least in principle. For that study, researchers built a model ship hull and released a large bubble underneath it, filming what happened. If the ship was in the right position above the bubble, the vessel would lose buoyancy and sink, the researchers said.
But even though the phenomenon worked with a model ship, there's no evidence that it ever actually occurred, Phrampus said. In addition, such large-scale methane releases have not been reported in recent history, when the ship and airplane disappearances supposedly took place within the Bermuda Triangle. The last time the ocean floor was venting gas in that area was after the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, Phrampus said.
"I personally see it as an interesting theory and nothing more," he said.
The U.S. Navy does not believe the Bermuda Triangle exists, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names does not recognize it as an official name. The insurance market Lloyd's of London determined that no more ships have sunk in that region than in other parts of the ocean, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
via livescience.com