Monday, April 6, 2009

Physics Foolies

Yes Foolies, not Follies.

Seems there may be two new things that the all-knowing physicists didn't know (i.e., they've been fooled).

First, on March 17 Fermi Lab announces a new particle, dubbed Y(4140) - it's rest mass is about 4140 MeV. The Fermi Lab announcement on the web says
Physicists did not predict its existence because Y(4140) appears to flout nature’s known rules for fitting quarks and antiquarks together.

We will learn something new. Cool.

Speaking of cool, six days later at the American Chemical Society there was an announcement that maybe Cold Fusion is real after all. Sounds like they have a reproducible experiment and clear evidence. They even managed to publish in a peer review journal, Naturwissenschaften. It will be interesting to see if all those folks that were so full of themselves when they denounced Pons and Fleischmann 20 years ago have enough integrity to admit they were wrong.

In any case, sounds like there may be new things to learn about science after all. Isn't that what science is all about?

1 comment:

K T Cat said...

The cold fusion thing has got to be creating all kinds of excitement within the Ohioan household. Congrats to Mrs. Ohioan!