“For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.
Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.
Parity was long thought to be a fundamental law of nature. It essentially states that the universe is neither right- nor left-handed — that the laws of physics remain unchanged when expressed in inverted coordinates. In the early 1950s it was found that the so-called weak force, which is responsible for nuclear radioactivity, breaks the parity law. However, the strong force, which holds together subatomic particles, was thought to adhere to the law of parity, at least under normal circumstances.
Now this law appears to have been broken by a team of about a dozen particle physicists, including Jack Sandweiss, Yale’s Donner Professor of Physics. Since 2000, Sandweiss has been smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together as part of the STAR experiment at RHIC, a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator, to study the law of parity under the resulting extreme conditions.”
Read more at Physorg.com (thanks, SuZi)
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‘…..smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together …’ What, like some crazy game of nuclear conkers!
That’s it! We’re all doomed!
Awsome!
They can’t have broken a law of nature by definition (nature is whatever exists – including mankinds works and inventions) – what they have done is discover that the current theory governing the expected behaviour is incomplete or incorrect.
When I read things like this – I know why God didn’t want us messing around with His toys. He forbid us to mess with the Tree of Knoledge when Adam and Eve were still innocent. When we started working together on a tower which would reach ito His heaven – God came down and confused us. Obviously, there’s just some things He wants us to leave alone!
CALL THE ROZZERS!!
Wow… I therefore declare that we were for an instant just as powerful as God.
I agree with RColdbreath, which if made to make an official statement, the scientists would, too.
Jody’s a nut. We’re talking about facts not make believe. Mickey Mouse also had no part in the experiment.
Ohh, I often go to Brookhaven lab to do experiments!
always pleasing to hear things like this.
But I quite agree – conservation of parity is only a theory and not one many people truly believe anymore. I think that CPT is the combined transformation law which is thought to be well behaved and conserved always, but we don’t know. The LHC might help solve some of these intriguing mysteries of nature.
This is directed to Jody and Cragadom, who are both interested in facts which lead to truth and knowledge.
Flogging my blog is oh so wrong.
But what else can I do?
I haven’t a whole lot of time left.
So I do what I have to do.
It’s all about Adam and Eve, you see.
It’s not about lyrics that stink.
So focus a little on substance.
And forget about lyrics that stink.
http://www.TheFirstScandal.blogspot.com