'Beauty with antimatter bottom' created out of pure energy

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle punisher ever assembled by the human race, say that experiments there are going well. In particular, they have managed to create out of pure energy a thing which they describe as a "beauty" featuring an antimatter bottom. LHCb Beauty particle collision …

[Huntsman]

Lewis Page

always raises a smile with his articles. By articles I mean stories, not his testicles.

[TeeCee]

Au contraire.

I think that the Lewis' bollocks is just as funny as his serious stuff.

[Ken Hagan]

Beauty or Bottom, pick one.

Yes, the b quark is occasionally referred to as beauty. It is one of a duo with the t quark and depending on who you ask they are "truth and beauty" or "top and bottom". But you have to pick one set of names and stick with them.

Whoever named this beauty particle clearly belongs to the truth and beauty crowd, so I suggest there is no bottom on display here. Sorry to disappoint.

[GrahamT]

John Keats explains this

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

[lglethal]

So what your saying is...

... that this should be an anti-beauty not an anti-bottom? Then may i be the first to propse we rename the anti-bottom an "Essex Lass"?

"Dave i think we've created a beauty"

"Wait Tom, nope its not a beauty, its the opposite of a beauty!"

"No! Not an Essex Lass!"

"Yep, 'fraid so. Still im sure she'll put out a lot.... (of energy)"

[Anonymous Coward]

Strewth

I was thinking more along the line of 'you beauty' and 'ripper' along with the 'mate' particle.

[Gianni Straniero]

No bottom on display

Nor an antibottom, mores the pity. I understand (in the loosest possible sense of the term) that the antimatter partner to a bottom quark is a "bottom anti-quark".

I wonder if they're beginning to regret their nomenclature.

Boffin [indicating screen]: This is a top quark.

Joe Public: And that's the opposite of a bottom quark?

Boffin: No. That would be a top antiquark.

Joe: That's strange

Boffin [pinching bridge of nose]: No, it isn't. [Indicates other part of screen]. That's strange.

Joe: Why, what is it?

Boffin: Strange, dammit! It's a strange quark, you idiot!

Joe: Charmed, I'm sure.

Boffin: [head explodes]

[Anonymous Coward]

@Boffin: [head explodes]

He should have worn the reinforced tight-fitting headgear instead of the Susquehanna hat!

[TeeCee]

A beauty with an antimatter bottom?

We all know what happens when anti-matter meets matter, don't we?

Dis-arsed-her.

[Gordon is not a Moron]

"excited charmonium" ?

sounds like it belongs in an episode of Pokemon

[IR]

I suspect

it was discovered by Bo Selecta's Michael Jackson. He he! Charmone muthafuckers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mean a thing if...

Doesn't mean a thing if they can't get the hostess's bra to jump two feet to the left. Should have used PG Tips. (DNA: big respect!)

[Peter Gathercole]

...and made sure it was really hot

I'm off to find a teacake, and some perspective.

[Glyn Smith]

Paint it pink

Whatever it is, it's Somebody Else's Problem

[teacake]

@Peter Gathercole

"I'm off to find a teacake, and some perspective."

You rang?

[Captain Save-a-ho]

Actually, that's not true...

These are the group of scientists who weren't invited to those sorts of parties (and who thought it's a debasement of science).

I think I'm a sofa...

[Elmer Phud]

Disclaimer

"STANDARD REG SCIENCE QUALITY WARNING: The chance that we are following this correctly is roughly equivalent to that of a man with no arms throwing a handful of jelly through a falling doughnut at fifty yards without touching the sides."

Doesn't matter - it's Friday and it says 'bottom', that's all we need to know.

[soandso]

hold on

didn't you mean to say "it antimatters"? God I am on fire today.

[Tom 64]

excellent

Keep 'em coming Lewis

[Carlos Cruz]

Ahhh, the charm of an anti-bottom...

Paris, because her bottom is a beauty.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedant alert

"It seems that the B+ beauty was produced by the head-on collision of two protons travelling at light speed"

Not so - to get a proton to light speed would require infinite energy to do so since it has non-zero rest mass...

And Malaysian cars were never that quick...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice one Lewis!

Lewis is on song, the BOFH's back in Mission Control, it's Friday - all's well with the world.

[Winkypop]

More articles 'bout particles !!

Yay!

Ain't applied science wonderful.

Who needs a mythical deity?

[Trollslayer]

Disappooointing accurate

Tsk, not so tabloid.

Very nicely done guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-Matter Bottom?

Been there, done that. All it took was a dodgy curry...

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't got a clue

But top reporting anyway!

[TeeCee]

Ah, the symmetry!

I find it interesting that:

Proving E=MC² involves drawing lots of esoteric symbols, then some complicated engineering and results in a big hole in the ground.

Proving M=E/C² involves digging a big hole in the ground, then some complicated engineering and results in the display of a lot of esoteric symbols.

[Robert Fletcher]

@TeeCee

Excellent! You win my "profundity award" of the week :-)

[I ain't Spartacus]

You wouldn't mind running through that again would you?

Preferably in 'Captain Dummy Talk' [tm].

I'd really like to understand some of this stuff, but I think I'm pretty much reduced to, "ooooh look at the pretty lights", with maybe a side order of, "wubble".

Still, keep up the good work. While I continue to read the articles, I can continue to pretend to myself that I'm a scientifically literate renaissance man, rather than a knuckle-dragging, biomass harvest unit to feed our inevitable machine overlords.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Pedant alert

The REST mass of the protons was way smaller than the B+ (disappointing grade to some ;-) )

The sum of the masses they had in the lab frame of reference was as high or higher than the B+.

Great fun nonetheless

[scottboy]

as any fule kno

Haven't seen that for years and now I can't find my copy chiz chiz.

[Stone Fox]

something called "CP-violation"

sounds like something that'd get you the ban hammer on /b/.

[Bill Neal]

CP violation?

People goto prison for that sort of thing.

[Charlie Clark]

Where's it all gone?

I mean we're missing about half of the universe. Did someone leave it on the Tube on the way home? It's typical of the government. Well, I'm not going to pay any taxes for any of this strange beauty!

Great article Lewis. When's the book out?

[Anonymous Coward]

You had my hopes up!

"'Beauty with antimatter bottom' created out of pure energy"

I had my fingers crossed that I'd get to give her a "big bang"

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Quick Maths...

Mass of a proton: 1.672621x10^-27 kg

Mass of B+: 1.672621x10^-26 kg (fives times heavier than two protons, per article)

Difference: 1.3380968x10-26 kg

e = 1.20262x10-9 joules (I think)

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute...

If someone has no arms how in the blue fuck are they going to throw a handful of anything?

Unless of course their hands are attached at the shoulders...

Hmmm

[Naughtyhorse]

ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESYS

Could be a friend of stephen right's friend with wooden legs but real feet... no arms, but real hands.

you may well mock, but it's not the most bonkers idea on *this* page

[bob, mon!]

jelly, donuts, GeV, and beauty

Funny you should mention jelly donuts --- as we should all remember from physics (or maybe cooking) class, 1 jelly donut gives about 1 megaJoule, thus about 6e15 GeV.

So you'd need around 1.2 trillion anti-bottomed beauties to get that jelly into that donut.

My conclusion: the LHC is not as effective as a stationary bicycle for weight loss.

[Chemist]

Re : STANDARD REG SCIENCE QUALITY WARNING:

I think a more apt comparison is " as much chance as a politician in a truth telling contest"

Douglas Adams - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

(I don't have the Book to hand but it's something like that)

[JakSuede]

Off With Their Hats!

I had one of those head-shrinking adornments, but it exploded on reading this article...

[A Non e-mouse]

Well Done Everyone

I'm not sure what's better: The article or all the comments.

Well done everyone. You all deserve a beer (or three..)

[Anonymous Coward]

A top-bottom conundrum

You think the nomenclature of quarks is in a mess? Try something as prosaic as one's sexual proclivities if you want to witness confusion on the run.

Now as most readers of El Reg know, some gentlemen prefer the company of other gentlemen when engaging in the relief of internal glandular pressures, and deploy a range of activities (generally known as "play", except to fundies, who call it all a "deplorable lifestyle") to accomplish depressurization of certain internal glands. Many of these activities clearly have one partner taking the leading role, and the assignment of players to the epistemological categories "top" and "bottom" is easy. But some types of play don't lend themselves to such easy description because they embody a conflict between the psychological reality and the physical reality.

All of which adds up to a plea for gay men not to use "top" and "bottom" when describing their unspeakable, deplorable, unnatural lusts, but rather to use phrases such as "I prefer to be Xed" and "I prefer to X", for various values of X.

Postscript: I'm wondering if it's possible to build a Large Gay Man Collider (LGMC) and fire highly energetic dudes in pink feather boas and fluffy sweaters at highly butch dudes kitted out in High Leather. What would be the lifetime of the resultant particles? Would flashing disco lights be an essential part of the apparatus???

[blackworx]

You had me at detecto cavern

And when "this means that pretty much the whole of physics is wrong, which seems to be pretty much normal for physics" came along I actually had to wipe a tear from my eye.

Keep 'em coming!

[Astarte]

Around the Circle

Wonderful stuff and good reporting. We Need More.

As an aside, reading the article, having just returned from Slims Throat Emporium, the mention of muons and anti-muons seemed to settle in my brain. Could this be a covert reference to cats? Mewing and anti-mewing or simply mews and anti-mews. Schoedinger knew all about cats and by association mewing or muon(ing). The chaps at LHC might need to stand back from their discoveries just to apply Schroedinger's and Heisenberg's theories. I'm sure they do, but do they really/

I'd suggest that bottoms and tops exist simultaneously until one attempts to investigate one of them.

Ok, Back to the pub.

[Anonymous Coward]

LHC my ass.(bottom?)

That top pic. looks like a screen capture of Win. Media Player visualizations window.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Sir

"The chance that we are following this correctly is roughly equivalent to that of a man with no arms throwing a handful of jelly through a falling doughnut at fifty yards without touching the sides"

Piece of piss that, so I reckon you must've done well. You should do guest spots in The New Scientist, it would liven up the tone a bit :)

I fucking love the Reg, don't know what I'd do without it. Along with my webmail and a motorbike forum, it's one of the only three sites I visit *all* the time, and you only have to read this article to see why.

Please can I have my free t-shirt now :)

</smarm>

[Black Betty]

I'm getting a hadron just thinking about this.

And a bottom like that should definitely be lepton.

[Anonymous Coward]

like sir mix a lot...

i am very much *NOT* an anti-bottom

[VeganVegan]

Let's get to the bottom of this...

Does the anti-callipygian emanations have anything to do with the cleft stick and sandy bumwad?

[Anonymous Coward]

what did the beauty say?

does my bottom look big in this

[SilverWave]

Top Man Lewis

ah...

Anyway Liked it a lot :-)

Cheers.

[Dave Wallace]

Telegraph Headline

Large Hardon Collider cracks off a Beauty.

[w3a2z]

w3a2z

Antimatter is a misnomer.

"Antimatter" evolves in anti-time.

It pursues... anti-entropy.

There is a complementary, symmetric component of the Universe, implicit in the non-local quantum state change, called the Big Bang.

The Universe is The Di-verse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cor luvaduk?

Is this the solar system?

Is this planet Earth?

Has there been a slight perturbation is space-time continuum (wormholes accepted)?

I need a coffee?

[Neil Cooper]

I did it!

I just created a fugly!

[Thomas 4]

Register Science.....

....we do what we must because we can.

You know, if El Reg took its science seriously instead of looking for SUBATOMIC DEVESTATION and QUASI DIMENSIONAL RIFTS TO LIZARD SPACE, it wouldn't even be a tenth as awesome as it currently is.

[Anonymous Coward]

So philosophical

I wonder what the church punters have to say about it? I'm just that tipsy that I'm not afraid to ask.

Anonymous because separation of church and state applies only to the government - or that part of it that still honors the Constitution at more than face value, at least. Tee-hee?....

[Svein Skogen]

Mix up things properly!

If you're going to mix up top/bottom and truth/beauty in the antimatter setting, wouldn't this be an anti-top (topless) beauty?

//Svein

[asiaseen]

Surely,

an anti-bottom ought to be the same thing as a front bottom?

[Roger Greenwood]

Without doubt

this gets my vote for article of the year (so far).

[jon 77]

hmpfh

"the sooner the missing 96 per cent of the universe can be tracked down - perhaps hidden in another dimension or something."

well, to keep it simple, we CANNOT see all the universe.. Until we make a craft to get out there, that is.. *sight* is limited by the speed of light, so the farther away something is, the older it is...

A bit like shining a very weak torch into a LARGE darkened warehouse, you will not be able to see the far wall, until you get much closer...

[Adam 10]

Not that simple

I like the torch/warehouse analogy, but it's not just a matter of being able to see what's very far away. What the scientists allude to here is that we can't see everything that's right here, around us.

There is some stuff that we know is around us because it interacts very sparingly with the stuff we can see (neutrinos through a tank of cleaning fluid, for instance). However, there is a lot of stuff out there that we THINK exists, but we're not sure because we haven't yet figured out how it would interract (if at all) with the stuff that we can see.

[Robert E A Harvey]

Random thought waves

All of this makes me realise how clever the Victorians were, when every household had several anti-maccasars

Mine's the one with the Rowland's stains on the collar.

[sgb]

Rant time

Don't use comments like 'pretty much the whole of physics is wrong' - it just panders to the nut jobs that don't know what the word 'theory' means.

To take a stupid example, if all of our understanding of physics was wrong, would wouldn't have been able to build the collider in the first place. Or a car, a radio, a lightbulb or a hammer. Or boil water for a cup of tea. At the very least, most people understand enough physics to know that if you heat up water enough it will boil, and they'd be right. Admittedly most people can't do the maths.

Mostly, the Standard Model is incomplete and will be replaced with one that explains everything at least as well as the current theory and hopefully more bits besides.

[Adam 10]

+1

I agree. The problem with being an honest physicist and saying "This is a theory" is that many hear this statement as "Even I have doubt in this, and I'm the scientist who came up with it!!!" before using it as an argument in the next anti-evolution conversation they have.

Namely "Aha, even SCIENTISTS doubt evolution really happened!".

[Anonymous Coward]

therefore...

if Beauty = Truth

and

Beauty has mass,

and

weight = mass x gravity

then what keeps our politicians from floating off into space?

[Chemist]

Re : therefore...

Must be our BAD LUCK