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Mysterious Particle Found After Decades of Searching (Majorana fermion)
Live Science ^ | April 17, 2012 | Jesse Emspak

Posted on 04/17/2012 12:16:44 PM PDT by presidio9

An elusive particle that is its own antiparticle may have been found, and, if confirmed, would be the first time a phenomenon predicted decades ago has been seen in a real system.

Some researchers suggest that in the future, this mysterious particle called a Majorana fermion could be useful in carrying bits of information in quantum computers.

In a paper published in the journal Science Thursday, Vincent Mourikand Leo P. Kouwenhoven said they were able to make the Majorana fermions appear by exposing a small circuit to a magnetic field.

Until now, the only suggestion of the particle's existence was a theory posed by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937, who predicted the Majorana fermion. [Infographic: Nature's Tiniest Particles Dissected]

While the evidence is strong, there are still more experiments to do to confirm the finding. But that may be fitting: Majorana himself was, by many accounts, a brilliant physicist. (He was the first to propose a theoretical basis for the existence of neutrons.) But in 1938, he took a boat trip from Naples to Palermo and disappeared. His body was never found, and the circumstances of his disappearance have remained mysterious.

Wacky particles

Elementary particles come in two types: fermions and bosons. Fermions are particles such as electrons, leptons and quarks (which themselves make up protons and neutrons). Fermions make up matter and obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which says two particles can't be in the same quatum state at the same time. (This is why two protons or neutrons, for instance, can't be in the same place at once). Bosons are things such as photons and W particles, which carry forces.

Majorana fermions are so special because they are different from other fermions,

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: physics

1 posted on 04/17/2012 12:16:53 PM PDT by presidio9
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To: presidio9

I’m all for legalizing medical Majorana....


2 posted on 04/17/2012 12:20:58 PM PDT by apillar
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To: apillar

I am against antiparticle!


3 posted on 04/17/2012 12:25:37 PM PDT by mountainlion (I am voting for Sarah after getting screwed again by the DC Thugs.)
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To: apillar

Now we need to use the anti-matter in cold fusion reaction of HE3. If the reaction can be controlled in a certain magnetic field, gravity can be negated.

We could fly around in invisible bubbles with little nuclear powered canisters strapped to our backs.

(This is only hypothetical)


4 posted on 04/17/2012 12:32:16 PM PDT by Tenacious 1 (With regards to the GOP: I am prodisestablishmentarianistic!)
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To: mountainlion
I am against antiparticle!

Fighting the disestablishment of the antiparticle are ya? This is antidisestablishmentarianism.

(I'm trying to re-establish the use of the word here)

5 posted on 04/17/2012 12:34:39 PM PDT by Tenacious 1 (With regards to the GOP: I am prodisestablishmentarianistic!)
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To: presidio9
"Bosons, however, are particles that are their own antiparticle, and they don't annihilate when they touch each other."

Wrong - charged bosons, such as the electroweak boson W+, are not their own antiparticles. And even the Z0 boson, which is its own antiparticle, annihilates.

6 posted on 04/17/2012 12:38:49 PM PDT by JustSayNoToNannies (A free society's default policy: it's none of government's business.)
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To: presidio9
Apparently Ettore Majorana himself was also very interesting. He was part of the Italian school around Fermi. Brilliant, he started to act in a more and more eccentric manner and eventually disappeared mysteriously.
7 posted on 04/17/2012 12:40:26 PM PDT by wideminded
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To: presidio9

I wondered where I left it.


8 posted on 04/17/2012 12:41:08 PM PDT by FroggyTheGremlim (Conservative patriots, Rise up!)
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To: presidio9

Why buy fermions retail when you can get the same effects from free fakes!


9 posted on 04/17/2012 12:42:41 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: JustSayNoToNannies

What about Bo’sun Smee? Was he his own anti-particle? Or was he his own grandpa? I can’t remember which....


10 posted on 04/17/2012 12:54:53 PM PDT by Thane_Banquo (Support hate crime laws: Because some victims are more equal than others.)
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To: apillar
I’m all for legalizing medical Majorana....

Fermion's not here, man.

11 posted on 04/17/2012 1:02:19 PM PDT by Thane_Banquo (Support hate crime laws: Because some victims are more equal than others.)
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To: Tenacious 1
Now we need to use the anti-matter in cold fusion reaction of HE3. If the reaction can be controlled in a certain magnetic field, gravity can be negated.

No. IF pigs can fly THEN... (everything is possible)
12 posted on 04/17/2012 1:42:14 PM PDT by AdmSmith (GCTGATATGTCTATGATTACTCAT)
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To: presidio9

I love articles like this, revealing new discoveries.

It is my take though, that when we start seeing these types of discoveries break from China, it will be a real indication of danger ahead.


13 posted on 04/17/2012 2:51:12 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (Okay, now lets see if the RNC, Rove, and Card can get him elected without their core base. Game on!)
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To: DoughtyOne

This is not a discovery as normally understood, but a creation or invention. An abstract definition of particle is “an excited state of a system”. Elementary particles may be said to be “excited states of the vacuum”, and this marjorana thing is not that, as far as I understand the description. It’s more like a Cooper pair of electrons, which acts as a boson in BCS superconducting theory.


14 posted on 04/17/2012 3:10:27 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: AdmSmith

What? It could work.

Lol


15 posted on 04/17/2012 7:12:55 PM PDT by Tenacious 1 (With regards to the GOP: I am prodisestablishmentarianistic!)
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To: JustSayNoToNannies

“- charged bosons, such as the electroweak boson W+”

I always appreciate a nice pair of bosons.


16 posted on 04/17/2012 7:28:48 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: presidio9; SpaceBar
“Majorana then proceeded to develop a nuclear model based on neutrons and protons, without electrons, to analyze the forces between neutrons and protons in considerable detail, and to calculate the binding energies of several light nuclei. When he told Fermi and some of his friends of this work, its importance was immediately recognized, and Fermi urged Majorana to publish it, but Majorana demurred, because he thought his results, thus far, were too incomplete. Fermi then asked for permission to report Majorana’s results at the Paris conference, giving Majorana proper credit for the new ideas, but Majorana said that he would give permission only if his ideas were attributed an old professor of electrical engineering expected to be present at the conference. This strange proposal, showing Majorana’s whimsicality, was obviously unacceptable, and so Majorana’s ideas were promulgated only much later, after they had been independently discovered by other physicists.”

- Enrico Fermi, Physicist by Emilio Segrè

17 posted on 04/18/2012 6:04:10 AM PDT by wideminded
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