Undergraduate Helps Discover Beautiful Quark CombinationsOctober 24, 2006University of Rochester physics undergraduate Scott Field participated in the search for two subatomic particles whose existence was announced today by scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois. Field's research focused on the extremely rare quark of the "bottom" or "beauty" variety. For his work, Field received the Department of Physics and Astronomy Stoddard Prize for the best thesis of 2006. His supervisor, department chair Arie Bodek, won the 2004 American Physical Society's Panofsky Prize for measuring the distribution of quarks inside protons and neutrons. Bodek's doctoral thesis provided the evidence of the quark's existence and was the basis for the 1990 Nobel Prize in physics. There are six types of quarks: up, down, strange, charm, bottom/beauty, and top/truth. Particles with three quarks are called baryons, the most common of which are protons and neutrons. A proton has an up-up-down combination, while a neutron consists of down-down-up.
Scientists have observed many baryons, but combinations including the heavy bottom quark have remained elusive because they are difficult to produce: a lot of energy is required to create these heavier particles. In fact, until the evidence announced today by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) group, scientists had observed only one type of baryon with a bottom quark. CDF physicists now have evidence of two more types of baryons, one with an up-up-bottom combination, the other with down-down-bottom. These can be thought of as a proton and neutron with the third quark replaced by a bottom quark. Fermilab's Tevatron collider hurls protons and antiprotons through a four-mile circular accelerator close to the speed of light. Billions of particles smash together, releasing an enormous amount of energy, which creates other particles such as the two newly discovered baryons. Analyzing the Tevatron data, physicists observed approximately seventy up-up-bottom particles and seventy down-down-bottom particles. As predicted by theory, the new particles decay within a tiny fraction of a second and have a mass of about six times that of a regular proton. Rochester faculty who are members of the CDF group include professors Bodek and Kevin McFarland, and senior scientists Willis Sakumoto, Howard Budd, and Pawel de Barbaro. Field started his research with the Rochester CDF group by spending a summer as an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) student at Fermilab and continued his work during the academic year. As professor Bodek says, "The discovery fills another open spot in the periodic table of baryons and verifies the power of the standard model of particles and forces. The University of Rochester is very proud of Scott Field's contribution." For additional information about the discovery, see the Fermilab press release at http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/sigma-b-baryon.html University of Rochester Science News and Science Current Events Tag Cloud This tag cloud is a visual representation of term frequencies of random science news topics with common terms grouped together and emphasized by their display size. Dinosaur Hot Flashes Hurricane Pulmonary Fibrosis Agriculture Bullying Pulmonary Embolism Jellyfish Conservation Colonoscopy Parkinsons disease Electrons Hysterectomy Myopia Protein Folding Insomnia Diarrhea Smoking cessation Nanomaterials Ovarian Cancer Defibrillator Type 2 Diabetes Health Insurance Sharks Telomerase
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Related Quark Current Events and Quark News Articles MSU scientists help lead teams in detection of fundamental component of matter Michigan State University scientists and colleagues around the world took a step closer to understanding the universe with the discovery of a fundamental building block of nature. Particle oddball surprises CDF physicists at Fermilab Scientists of the CDF experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced yesterday (March 17) that they have found evidence of an unexpected particle whose curious characteristics may reveal new ways that quarks can combine to form matter. Precision measurement of W boson mass portends stricter limits for Higgs particle Scientists of the DZero collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have achieved the world's most precise measurement of the mass of the W boson by a single experiment. Combined with other measurements, the reduced uncertainty of the W boson mass will lead to stricter bounds on the mass of the elusive Higgs boson. Fermilab collider experiments discover rare single top quark Scientists of the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have observed particle collisions that produce single top quarks. Research team co-led by UC Riverside physicist observes production of single-top-quarks A group of 28 scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, co-led by UC Riverside's Ann Heinson, has made the first observation of the production of single top quarks - an observation that resulted from proton-antiproton collisions measured by the DZero detector in Fermilab's Tevatron, the world's highest-energy particle collider. Brown physicists play key role in single top quark discovery Brown University physicists have played a key role in observing particle collisions that produce a single top quark, one of the fundamental constituents of matter. The discovery was announced Monday by scientists of the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Moving Quarks Help Solve Proton Spin Puzzle New theory work at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has shown that more than half of the spin of the proton is the result of the movement of its building blocks: quarks. U-M physicists' analysis leads to discovery of new particle University of Michigan physicists played a leading role in the discovery of a new particle, the Omega b baryon, which is an exotic relative of the proton. UC Riverside physicists contribute to state-of-the-art detector installed in Switzerland UC Riverside scientists led by Gail Hanson, a distinguished professor of physics, are part of a collaboration of approximately 2300 international physicists who announced Dec. 19 that the world's largest silicon tracking detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, had been successfully installed. Physicists see similarities in stream of sand grains, exotic plasma at birth of universe Streams of granular particles bouncing off a target in a simple tabletop experiment produce liquid-like behavior also witnessed in a massive research apparatus that simulates the birth of the universe. More Quark Current Events and Quark News Articles |
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