Heaviest Particle of Antimatter Found | Big Bang & Antihelium | LiveScience: “At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) – a particle accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory — the nuclei of gold atoms collide, head-on, at near the speed of light. This simulates the conditions just after the Big Bang, a time when scientists think the universe was swirling with equal amounts of antimatter and regular matter.

Out of almost 1 billion atomic smashups, researchers detected 18 examples of the unique signature of the antihelium-4 nucleus. These 18 signatures were among data for half a trillion charged particles emitted by nearly a billion collisions.”

Bring on the antilithium!

Slashdot Science Story | Chameleon-Like Behavior of Neutrino Confirmed: “While closing a chapter on understanding the nature of neutrinos, the observation of neutrino oscillations is strong evidence for new physics. The Standard Model of fundamental particles posits no mass for the neutrino. For them to be able to oscillate, however, they must have mass.”

We’re depending on you all to help us figure this out!

8th Grade Students at Spartanburg Day School tackle the ideas and implications of string theory… 1 minute at a time.

YouTube Link

Homework 9

Please read and take notes. We’ll be discussing the reading in class on Monday and Tuesday next week.

You can get a preview of what we’ll be discussing and watching by checking out these vids.

Fun material!