Mesons Flip Between Matter and Antimatter

steve writes "A team of over 700 physicists at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator have observed the B-sub-s meson oscillating between matter and antimatter states at 3 trillion times a second. From the Fermilab press release: 'Immediately after the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago, equal amounts of matter and antimatter formed. Much of it quickly acted to annihilate the other, but for little-understood reasons, a bit more matter than antimatter survived, providing the universe with the planets, stars and galaxies visible today.' The Standard Model predicted the oscillation, and Fermilab has been working for 19 years to confirm it. The announcement is good press for Fermilab, which is pushing Congress to build a new 18-mile-long International Linear Collider."

Re:Enough with the big colliders already!

[caerwyn]

Almost all practical research derives in some way from "blue sky physics".

No, we can't immediately predict what will come out of this. But then, when electron spin was first discovered I'd imagine people were saying similar things- and only recently have there been reports that electron spin has been harnassed for storage/computation, which means it will finally come into the realm of practicality.

Not everything needs to have an immediate, obvious payoff to be worthwhile.

Re:Oh! Shiny!

[kaffiene]

Science shouldn't be an intra-nation dick measuring competition, it should be about advancing knowledge. I personally don't care where these things get built so long as they get built.

Money

[Mark_MF-WN]

You are aware, are you not, that there would be enough money for all of those things ten times over if the cost of ONE war could be saved?

Anyway, if you don't like the science that particle accelerators do, demonstrate that belief by refusing to get any MRI or PET scans, gamma knife surgery when you get cancer, or any of the dozens of other medical technologies that either derive from science learned in particle accelerators, or use particle accelerators directly. Of course, the very instant you need one of those things, you'll suddenly be a profound believer in the value of that science (or a hypocrite -- also a valid option).