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New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

phys.org

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Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#141

Post by seanc »

ansible wrote: post #121
whymad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True for what it is, but this is handled in the books. They literally don’t want our planet, they want our star . And the dark forest: without a history of correlated interaction we have no reason to believe they will allow us to live, so we can’t allow them to live, so they can’t allow us to live. Eliding a more major spoiler, they absolutely intended to annihilate us on arrival and they would have gotten away with…

> True for what it is, but this is handled in the books. They literally don’t want our planet, they want our star. That's... an odd reason. There are plenty of stars out there, unless the aliens started out right next door (like in Alpha Centauri) there's not much reason to go after our star. I haven't read the books...

Well, the thesis is that with exponential growth and a modest amount of time there _aren't_ plenty of stars out there.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#142

Post by megablast »

Panoramix wrote: post #136
f6v wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a great book, but it suffers from the same old issue. A civilization that is capable of packing a robot into particle by manipulating higher dimensions doesn’t need to take our planet. They could terraform Mars or any other planet they want.

Spoilers ahead It was such a letdown, the book starts great, and then the explanation turns out to be magical Alien proton computers? Yikes. It was so promising. I eventually read the whole trilogy, I have very mixed feelings about it. It had some pretty cool ideas but it's hard to get past all the giant plot holes and outlandish fantasy. I guess you have to be in the mood to constantly brush off the bad parts (and b…

Thanks for the spoilers.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#143

Post by danielheath »

bo0tzz wrote: post #117
alasdair_ wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same problem with the books. If the sophon is that omniscient and that powerful, it could do far more than just mess with experiments. I also never understood the wallfacers - why can’t they communicate via encryption, using a private key stored in each individuals mind alone?

How would you use that private key without it 'leaving' your mind?

The same way you use a private key in a computer without transmitting it?

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#144

Post by blackboxlogic »

alasdair_ wrote: post #62
amelius wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps the laws of physics that we observe are becoming more complicated over time, as a consequence of some deeper law of physics.

The simulation we all live in is getting a new patch with higher resolution models.

I wonder if we're in PROD, STAGE, QA or DEV? waves humanly

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#145

Post by xster »

HotHotLava wrote: post #97
ASalazarMX wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing everyone is too much to ask, remember they were ultimately just protons, physically they're not more powerful than cosmic rays. Their strength was information gathering and special effects.

Tbf, from the way they were described it should have been fairly easy to defeat the Sophons even without any science-fiction technology; just build e.g. 10-20 particle accelerators distributed over the world and take measurements close enough in time to each other that you cannot be at multiple sites without exceeding the speed of light. Then at most 3 of them could be corrupted for any given run, and these can be th…

I think the argument was that they could send Sophons faster than we can build particle accelerators.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#146

Post by cynicalkane »

Panoramix wrote: post #136
f6v wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a great book, but it suffers from the same old issue. A civilization that is capable of packing a robot into particle by manipulating higher dimensions doesn’t need to take our planet. They could terraform Mars or any other planet they want.

Spoilers ahead It was such a letdown, the book starts great, and then the explanation turns out to be magical Alien proton computers? Yikes. It was so promising. I eventually read the whole trilogy, I have very mixed feelings about it. It had some pretty cool ideas but it's hard to get past all the giant plot holes and outlandish fantasy. I guess you have to be in the mood to constantly brush off the bad parts (and b…

Spoilers.

There are a few parts of the book, according to the translator, that are done in the manner of a Chinese folktale, which he tried to translate to a different style in English. I'm no expert, but I got the impression the sophont chapter was in this category. It has this otherworldly silliness with the multiple attempts to create a sophont going wrong in different dimensions, calculated to fit the repetitive pattern of a fairy tale.

I think the thrust, which might be hard to read in translation, is this: we can't imagine the technology a superior alien species would come up with, so it's related as a fairy tale beyond technological realism.

Anyway, I doubt it was meant to be hard sci-fi.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#147

Post by godelski »

ansible wrote: post #121
whymad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True for what it is, but this is handled in the books. They literally don’t want our planet, they want our star . And the dark forest: without a history of correlated interaction we have no reason to believe they will allow us to live, so we can’t allow them to live, so they can’t allow us to live. Eliding a more major spoiler, they absolutely intended to annihilate us on arrival and they would have gotten away with…

> True for what it is, but this is handled in the books. They literally don’t want our planet, they want our star. That's... an odd reason. There are plenty of stars out there, unless the aliens started out right next door (like in Alpha Centauri) there's not much reason to go after our star. I haven't read the books...

> unless the aliens started out right next door (like in Alpha Centauri)

This is where the aliens are (a trinary system). It still takes them 400 years to get to Earth and so they are trying to stifle Earth's technological advancements because 1) we know they are coming 2) our technological growth is faster than them (this is partially explained due to different biological and environmental factors. The aliens can't lie to one another and have environmental factors that frequently wipe out or pause their technological advancements). The aliens in question are supposed to be only a few hundred years (max) ahead of us technologically (or smaller than the difference in time that it takes them to get here)

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#148

Post by im3w1l »

whatshisface wrote: post #32
amai wrote: post #28

What is the charge of a tetraquark? Is it neutral?

A tetraquark is four quarks. There exist three -1/3e quarks (dsb), three +2/3e quarks (uct), and then their +1/3e and -2/3e antimatter counterparts. 1e is the charge of one electron. The stability of a tetraquark is mainly a color/strong force thing and the electric charge comes along for the ride. Stable atomic nuclei, which are held together by the strong force, go up to +83e and they still don't fall apart due to…

The highest possible charge is 2/3 + 2/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 2. Every swap of a quark to a lower charge one reduces the total charge by 1. So the possibilities are 2, 1, 0, -1, -2.

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#149

Post by godelski »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #75
pseudobry wrote: post #42

I recently finished The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest, which explore the concept of aliens using their super advanced technology to mess with the results of Earth's particle accelerators, thereby stopping humanity's ability to develop technology based on new physics. Is this discovery exciting? Or are we living in The Three-Body Problem?

In the books, the Sophons got in the way of the accelerated particle beam but somehow avoided being destroyed themselves. They wouldn't have allowed a new particle to be discovered.

They were destroyed but could bring themselves back together. The thing is that the particles are intelligent so could break apart in random ways that didn't match what particle physicists expected (they would then recombine outside the detector as to not be exposed).

Re: New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered at CERN

#150

Post by godelski »

bequanna wrote: post #46
pseudobry wrote: post #42

I recently finished The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest, which explore the concept of aliens using their super advanced technology to mess with the results of Earth's particle accelerators, thereby stopping humanity's ability to develop technology based on new physics. Is this discovery exciting? Or are we living in The Three-Body Problem?

Interesting. For what reason are the aliens trying trying to stop us from discovering new physics? Stop us from blowing ourselves up? Blowing them up?

The aliens are coming to Earth to take it over. They aren't much more advanced than us and so don't want us to be more advanced than the fleet that arrives (it takes them a few hundred years to get to Earth).
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