Briareos H on 8/6/2011 at 19:59
I don't think there is currently a leading theory, but CP violation or not, the standard model is going to need once again arbitrary and complicated patches to remain valid.
We'll probably have to wait for more high-energy results from colliders (incl. LHC) and detectors like AMS-02 - as well as new brilliant minds able to tackle the standard model - before thinking about explaining it.
demagogue on 8/6/2011 at 20:38
Yeah I've only read the popular literature on it (well tried to read the tech literature but it makes my eyes cross), but I read the textbook for the undergrad course on String Theory and it even though it's still limited and still not empirically grounded yet, I could see why it's so popular comparing it to the Standard Model. It's supposed to get all the physical parameters & interactions we know with only a single parameter, the length of the string. Take that and all the physical quantities fall right out of it, while the Standard Model has like two dozen parameters you have to pull out of your ass and even then they're patchworked together and it's not clear why they are what they are, and entire patches are missing like gravity & dark matter. I can imagine people frustrated with all that arbitrary patchwork look at String Theory in near awe... If only they find a version that's self-consistent and empirically grounded.
I have no idea what I'm talking about. I know.
henke on 8/6/2011 at 21:06
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Serves you right for reading Dan Brown. You don't get to judge me (or anyone else) on anything at all ever again.
Oh man.
What about judging someone for getting their Dan Brown-trivia wrong though? I get to do that, right?
dexterward on 8/6/2011 at 21:34
I just finished reading "Manifold" by Stephen Baxter - it`s a hard sci -fi novel, about half of which is some crazy theorizing involving space, time, spacetime and all manners of parallel universes and energy states. Geezer has degrees in maths and engineering which makes his ideas rather interesting...
Space colnization won`t unfortunately happen in my lifetime and goddamn aliens are reluctant to appear so i`m left with hope for some major (anti - grav?) sci breakthrough to liven things up a little.
Anti matter - definitely step in the right direction. Applause for Cern.
Nicker on 9/6/2011 at 00:24
Quote Posted by henke
A team of Canadian physicists in the CERN laboratory in Geneve, actually.
Geneve is the Anti-Canada and in Anti-Canada "in" means "from". Why am I forever repeating myself?
Quote Posted by henke
Antimatter could be the
final solution...
I thought we already agreed, NOT before 2025!
Quote Posted by dexterward
Space colnization won`t unfortunately happen in my lifetime and goddamn aliens are reluctant to appear...
No we aren't! That's a lie perpetrated by the CIA.
Brian The Dog on 9/6/2011 at 12:26
Interestingly, one of my friends and fellow undergrads is one of the authors on this paper. I met up with him a few weeks back at a mutual friend's wedding. I knew he was working on anti-matter confinement, but nice to see him get a big profile paper in Nature.
As to why there's more matter than anti-matter, we were told (admittedly a good few years back) that this was one of the three big problems in cosmology, no-one really knows.
Edit - Don't know why he's listed on the paper as at TRIUMF, his Facebook page says he's at Univ. Zurich.
Martin Karne on 9/6/2011 at 23:24
Anti matter bombs, might need an in place particle accelerator for this purpose to guarantee successful detonation?
dexterward on 10/6/2011 at 12:22
Quote Posted by Martin Karne
Anti matter bombs, might need an in place particle accelerator for this purpose to guarantee successful detonation?
I thought you dropped them from an anti matter plane.
Martin Karne on 11/6/2011 at 05:15
It doesn't matters, if you have to remotely fly an anti-matter airplane that lasts only for 16 minutes and can only be synthesized one particle at the time.
:erg:
