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from the these-glueballs-ain't-for-sniffin dept.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/missing-glueballs-are-sticky-problem-for-particle-physics/
The discovery of the Higgs boson was rightfully heralded as a triumph of particle physics, one that brought completion to the Standard Model, the collection of theories that describes particles and their interactions. Lost in the excitement, however, was the fact that we're still missing a piece from the Standard Model—another type of particle that doesn't resemble any other we've yet seen.
The particle is a glueball, but its goofy name doesn't express how interesting it is. Glueballs are unique in that they don't contain any matter at all: they have no quarks or electrons or neutrinos. Instead, they are made entirely of gluons, which are the particles that bind quarks together inside protons, neutrons, and related objects.
Particle physicists are sure they exist, but everything else about them is complicated, to say the least. Like so many other exotic particles (including the Higgs), glueballs are very unstable, decaying quickly into other, less massive particles. We don't have any ideas about their masses, however, which is obviously kind of important to know if you want to find them. We also don't know exactly how they decay, making it hard to know exactly how we'll identify them in experiments.
If I may be so bold, what do fellow SNs think of modern particle physics, and do any of you have any crazy alternative non-particle-centric physical theories (for example, a model of reality that works using 7-dimensional strings as opposed to 1-dimensional strings from string theory?)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by number6x on Monday October 26 2015, @10:44PM
do any of you have any crazy alternative non-particle-centric physical theories
Do you want to completely destroy a thread before it starts?
Scientific theories need to be more than speculation. A new theory, to replace the standard model, needs to explain everything as well as the standard model, go beyond it, and make testable predictions. M-Theory (current string theory) is still trying to replicate the standard model. The standard model explained most of what was known in the 1960's and 1970's, when it was developed, and made some pretty bold predictions for some far out particles like the W, the Z and the Higgs. In the 1980's and beyond these particles have been confirmed. This is a pretty good thing for the boring old standard model.
String theory is doing what you are asking, but it will still be decades before it gets past the speculation stage and starts with some testable predictions. One of the predictions of string theory is that of super symmetry. The latest tests at LHC have not found evidence for super symmetry at the lowest predicted energies. This isn't a show stopper, but nature often follows the simplest path, and this means that the simplest string theory models are not supported by tests. However, since there are an infinite number of models, there are still many that could prove accurate!
There are some other interesting avenues being pursued as well. Instead of sticking with integer dimensions, some theoreticians are trying to develop field theories in space with fractional dimensions [arxiv.org]. Still in the speculation days.
Don't ever think that theoreticians aren't trying to think outside the box, they are. But they are trying to do it in strictly scientific ways that follow the rules of good theory in order to build something useful.
Speaking of string theory, I had Dr Witten for classical mechanics in graduate school. It was Dr Louis Witten [wikipedia.org], Dr Ed Witten's [wikipedia.org] Dad. Still a great theoretician! Dr witten told a story about one of the first research jobs he ever had working at the Glenn L Martin corporation (later Martin Marietta, later Lockheed Martin). He was working on Anti-Gravity research [wikipedia.org]! He and many of the other researchers kept telling the business people and the military that it wouldn't work. They already knew that because both matter and anti-matter both feel gravity in the same way. Anti-electrons (positrons) don't "fall up". Field theory also showed that a gravitational field would be mediated by a particle that would be its own ant-particle, probably a spin 2 particle [fourmilab.ch].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @11:21PM