You can find all sorts of loopholes that are believable to make most truthful and factual accounts seem unreal.
The science behind RHCs liver thread
- Thread starter Ivan Dobsky
- Start date
-
Please bear with us on the new site integration and fixing any known bugs over the coming days. If you can not log in please try resetting your password and check your spam box. If you have tried these steps and are still struggling email [email protected] with your username/registered email address
-
New Antimatter Experiment at Large Hadron Collider Will Help With the Search for Dark Matter
0
By trenorentr on June 15, 2020 Science
A view of the underground ALICE detector used in the study of the antideuteron Credit: CERN
The ALICE collaboration has presented new results on the production rates of antideuterons based on data collected at the highest collision energy delivered so far at the Large Hadron Collider. The antideuteron is composed of an antiproton and an antineutron. The new measurements are important because the presence of antideuterons in space is a promising indirect signature of dark matter candidates. The results mark a step forward in the search for dark matter.
Recent astrophysical and cosmological results point towards dark matter being the dominant form of matter in the universe, accounting for approximately 85% of all matter. The nature of dark matter remains a great mystery, and cracking its secrets would open a new door for physics.
Detecting antideuterons in space could be an indirect signature of dark matter, since they could be produced during the annihilation or decay of neutralinos or sneutrinos, which are hypothetical dark matter particles.
Various experiments are on the hunt for antideuterons in the Universe, including the AMS detector on the International Space Station. However, before inferring the existence of dark matter from the detection of these nuclei, scientists must account for both their rates of production by other sources (namely, collisions between cosmic rays and nuclei in the interstellar medium) and the rates of their annihilation caused by encountering matter on their journey. In order to assert that the detected antideuteron is related to the presence of dark matter, the production and annihilation rates must be well understood.
By colliding protons in the LHC, ALICE scientists mimicked antideuteron production through cosmic ray collisions, and could thus measure the production rate associated with this phenomenon. These measurements provide a fundamental basis for modeling antideuteron production processes in space. By comparing the amount of antideuterons detected with that of their matter counterparts (deuterons, which do not annihilate in the detector), they were able to determine, for the first time, the annihilation probability of low-energy antideuterons.
These measurements will contribute to future antideuteron studies in the Earth’s vicinity, and help physicists determine whether they are signatures of the presence of dark matter particles, or if on the contrary, they are manifestations of known phenomena.
In the future, these types of studies at ALICE could be extended to heavier antinuclei. “The LHC and the ALICE experiment represent a unique facility to study antimatter nuclei,” says ALICE Spokesperson Luciano Musa. “This research will continue to provide a crucial reference for the interpretation of future astrophysical dark matter searches.”
0
By trenorentr on June 15, 2020 Science
You must log in or register to see images
A view of the underground ALICE detector used in the study of the antideuteron Credit: CERN
The ALICE collaboration has presented new results on the production rates of antideuterons based on data collected at the highest collision energy delivered so far at the Large Hadron Collider. The antideuteron is composed of an antiproton and an antineutron. The new measurements are important because the presence of antideuterons in space is a promising indirect signature of dark matter candidates. The results mark a step forward in the search for dark matter.
Recent astrophysical and cosmological results point towards dark matter being the dominant form of matter in the universe, accounting for approximately 85% of all matter. The nature of dark matter remains a great mystery, and cracking its secrets would open a new door for physics.
Detecting antideuterons in space could be an indirect signature of dark matter, since they could be produced during the annihilation or decay of neutralinos or sneutrinos, which are hypothetical dark matter particles.
Various experiments are on the hunt for antideuterons in the Universe, including the AMS detector on the International Space Station. However, before inferring the existence of dark matter from the detection of these nuclei, scientists must account for both their rates of production by other sources (namely, collisions between cosmic rays and nuclei in the interstellar medium) and the rates of their annihilation caused by encountering matter on their journey. In order to assert that the detected antideuteron is related to the presence of dark matter, the production and annihilation rates must be well understood.
By colliding protons in the LHC, ALICE scientists mimicked antideuteron production through cosmic ray collisions, and could thus measure the production rate associated with this phenomenon. These measurements provide a fundamental basis for modeling antideuteron production processes in space. By comparing the amount of antideuterons detected with that of their matter counterparts (deuterons, which do not annihilate in the detector), they were able to determine, for the first time, the annihilation probability of low-energy antideuterons.
These measurements will contribute to future antideuteron studies in the Earth’s vicinity, and help physicists determine whether they are signatures of the presence of dark matter particles, or if on the contrary, they are manifestations of known phenomena.
In the future, these types of studies at ALICE could be extended to heavier antinuclei. “The LHC and the ALICE experiment represent a unique facility to study antimatter nuclei,” says ALICE Spokesperson Luciano Musa. “This research will continue to provide a crucial reference for the interpretation of future astrophysical dark matter searches.”
Growing Anomalies at the Large Hadron Collider Raise Hopes
Recent measurements of particles called B mesons deviate from predictions. Alone, each oddity looks like a fluke, but their collective drift is more suggestive.
15
Read Later
Computer reconstruction of a collision event in the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment. The collision produces a B meson, which subsequently decays into other particles that strike LHCb’s detectors.
CERN/LHCb
Charlie Wood
Contributing Writer
May 26, 2020
View PDF/Print Mode
Abstractionsabstractions blogLarge Hadron Colliderparticle physicsphysicstheoretical physics
Amid the chaotic chains of events that ensue when protons smash together at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, one particle has popped up that appears to go to pieces in a peculiar way.
All eyes are on the B meson, a yoked pair of quark particles. Having caught whiffs of unexpected B meson behavior before, researchers with the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) have spent years documenting rare collision events featuring the particles, in hopes of conclusively proving that some novel fundamental particle or effect is meddling with them.
In their latest analysis, first presented at a seminar in March, the LHCb physicists found that several measurements involving the decay of B mesons conflict slightly with the predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics — the reigning set of equations describing the subatomic world. Taken alone, each oddity looks like a statistical fluctuation, and they may all evaporate with additional data, as has happened before. But their collective drift suggests that the aberrations may be breadcrumbs leading beyond the Standard Model to a more complete theory.
“For the first time in certainly my working life, there are a confluence of different decays that are showing anomalies that match up,” said Mitesh Patel, a particle physicist at Imperial College London who is part of LHCb.
See all Abstractions blog
The B meson is so named because it contains a bottom quark, one of six fundamental quark particles that account for most of the universe’s visible matter. For unknown reasons, the quarks break down into three generations: heavy, medium and light, each with quarks of opposite electric charge. Heavier quarks decay into their lighter variations, almost always switching their charge, too. For instance, when the negatively charged heavy bottom quark in a B meson drops a generation, it usually becomes a middleweight, positively charged “charm” quark.
The LHCb collaboration scours the wreckage of particle pileups for exceptions to this rule. For every million B meson decays they see, one fringe event showcases a rebellious bottom quark metamorphosing into a “strange” quark instead, dropping a generation but keeping its negative charge. The Standard Model predicts the exceedingly low rate of these events and how they will play out. But because they are so rare, any tweaks coming from undiscovered particles or effects should be obvious.
LHCb’s new analysis covered about 4,500 rare B meson decays, roughly doubling the data from their previous study in 2015. Each transformation ends with four outbound particles hitting a ring-shaped detector. When experimentalists compared the various angles between the particles with the angles predicted by the Standard Model, they found a deviation from the expected pattern. The collective significance of the anomalous angles grew slightly since the last analysis, and researchers say the new measurements also tell a more unified story. “Suddenly the consistency between the different angular observables got much better,” said Felix Kress, an LHCb researcher who helped crunch the numbers.
Statistically, the deviation in the angular pattern is equivalent to flipping a coin 100 times and getting 66 heads, rather than the usual 50 or so. For a fair coin, the odds of such a deviation are about 1 in 1,000.
But amid oodles of particle collisions, statistical fluctuations are bound to arise, so a 1-in-1,000 deviation doesn’t count as hard proof of a break with the Standard Model. For that, the physicists will need to accumulate enough B meson decays to demonstrate a deviation of 1 in 1.7 million, akin to flipping 75 heads. “If this is new physics,” Jure Zupan, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cincinnati, said of the current update, “it’s not significant enough.”
Still, the observed pattern hints that something is off with B meson decay products in the lepton family, the other category of matter particles aside from quarks. Like quarks, leptons come in heavy, medium and light generations (called tau particles, muons and electrons, respectively); the Standard Model says they’re all identical except for their mass. Each B meson decay ends by shooting off a twin pair of any of the three types of leptons. LHCb’s latest update focused on the anomalous angular pattern produced by muon events, which are easiest to detect.
The experiment also logs a smaller number of B meson decays ending with electrons. The Standard Model demands that both types of decays should play out in exactly the same way, but a 2014 analysis by the LHCb team uncovered a possible difference between the muon events and the electron events. Taken together, the anomalies could mean that the novelty may lie not only with muons, but with electrons as well.
Patel’s group is currently working on an update to the electron-versus-muon measurement, which he said makes for a much “cleaner,” unambiguous observation than the muon angle measurements alone. “This is a Standard Model killer,” he said.
If the B meson anomalies are real, physicists have two leading theories to explain them.
A new, hypothetical force-carrying particle called the Zʹ boson would resemble the standard weak force that turns one matter particle into another, except that it would influence electrons and muons differently. As a bonus, the Zʹ boson would also imply the existence of an additional massive particle that could make up the universe’s missing dark matter. “We are moving to the next step, which is trying not just to explain the anomaly, but to connect the anomaly to other problems,” said Joaquim Matias, a theoretical physicist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Why Do Matter Particles Come in Threes? A Physics Titan Weighs In.
The more exotic possibility is that LHCb researchers are detecting hints of a fabled particle — the leptoquark — that can turn a quark into a lepton and vice versa. Theorists have long contemplated the possibility of leptoquarks, but the idea has grown less popular as experiments have ruled out the simplest kinds. Still, the three-generation quark family tree looks suspiciously like the lepton family tree, and neither pattern is well understood. Decaying B mesons may be revealing a leptoquark link between them. “That’s the dream,” said Zupan.
As theorists consider these possibilities, the LHCb team will have to see if they can flip enough heads to prove that their coin is definitely not standard — an endeavor that may take the rest of the decade.
Ultimately, however, the particle physics community will hold out for confirmation from a different apparatus, such as the Belle II experiment in Japan, or one of the LHC’s two main detectors. Either proving or eliminating the B meson anomalies will be a herculean endeavor, but researchers have all the tools they need. “With four experiments that can chip in,” Zupan said, “the future is bright.”
High time for an LHC update with the resumption of the season close at hand. As you'll all remember, I've been waiting for this since the Big Boy first fired up
Recent measurements of particles called B mesons deviate from predictions. Alone, each oddity looks like a fluke, but their collective drift is more suggestive.
15
Read Later
You must log in or register to see images
Computer reconstruction of a collision event in the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment. The collision produces a B meson, which subsequently decays into other particles that strike LHCb’s detectors.
CERN/LHCb
You must log in or register to see images
Charlie Wood
Contributing Writer
May 26, 2020
View PDF/Print Mode
Abstractionsabstractions blogLarge Hadron Colliderparticle physicsphysicstheoretical physics
You must log in or register to see images
Amid the chaotic chains of events that ensue when protons smash together at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, one particle has popped up that appears to go to pieces in a peculiar way.
All eyes are on the B meson, a yoked pair of quark particles. Having caught whiffs of unexpected B meson behavior before, researchers with the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) have spent years documenting rare collision events featuring the particles, in hopes of conclusively proving that some novel fundamental particle or effect is meddling with them.
In their latest analysis, first presented at a seminar in March, the LHCb physicists found that several measurements involving the decay of B mesons conflict slightly with the predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics — the reigning set of equations describing the subatomic world. Taken alone, each oddity looks like a statistical fluctuation, and they may all evaporate with additional data, as has happened before. But their collective drift suggests that the aberrations may be breadcrumbs leading beyond the Standard Model to a more complete theory.
“For the first time in certainly my working life, there are a confluence of different decays that are showing anomalies that match up,” said Mitesh Patel, a particle physicist at Imperial College London who is part of LHCb.
See all Abstractions blog
The B meson is so named because it contains a bottom quark, one of six fundamental quark particles that account for most of the universe’s visible matter. For unknown reasons, the quarks break down into three generations: heavy, medium and light, each with quarks of opposite electric charge. Heavier quarks decay into their lighter variations, almost always switching their charge, too. For instance, when the negatively charged heavy bottom quark in a B meson drops a generation, it usually becomes a middleweight, positively charged “charm” quark.
The LHCb collaboration scours the wreckage of particle pileups for exceptions to this rule. For every million B meson decays they see, one fringe event showcases a rebellious bottom quark metamorphosing into a “strange” quark instead, dropping a generation but keeping its negative charge. The Standard Model predicts the exceedingly low rate of these events and how they will play out. But because they are so rare, any tweaks coming from undiscovered particles or effects should be obvious.
LHCb’s new analysis covered about 4,500 rare B meson decays, roughly doubling the data from their previous study in 2015. Each transformation ends with four outbound particles hitting a ring-shaped detector. When experimentalists compared the various angles between the particles with the angles predicted by the Standard Model, they found a deviation from the expected pattern. The collective significance of the anomalous angles grew slightly since the last analysis, and researchers say the new measurements also tell a more unified story. “Suddenly the consistency between the different angular observables got much better,” said Felix Kress, an LHCb researcher who helped crunch the numbers.
Statistically, the deviation in the angular pattern is equivalent to flipping a coin 100 times and getting 66 heads, rather than the usual 50 or so. For a fair coin, the odds of such a deviation are about 1 in 1,000.
But amid oodles of particle collisions, statistical fluctuations are bound to arise, so a 1-in-1,000 deviation doesn’t count as hard proof of a break with the Standard Model. For that, the physicists will need to accumulate enough B meson decays to demonstrate a deviation of 1 in 1.7 million, akin to flipping 75 heads. “If this is new physics,” Jure Zupan, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cincinnati, said of the current update, “it’s not significant enough.”
Still, the observed pattern hints that something is off with B meson decay products in the lepton family, the other category of matter particles aside from quarks. Like quarks, leptons come in heavy, medium and light generations (called tau particles, muons and electrons, respectively); the Standard Model says they’re all identical except for their mass. Each B meson decay ends by shooting off a twin pair of any of the three types of leptons. LHCb’s latest update focused on the anomalous angular pattern produced by muon events, which are easiest to detect.
The experiment also logs a smaller number of B meson decays ending with electrons. The Standard Model demands that both types of decays should play out in exactly the same way, but a 2014 analysis by the LHCb team uncovered a possible difference between the muon events and the electron events. Taken together, the anomalies could mean that the novelty may lie not only with muons, but with electrons as well.
Patel’s group is currently working on an update to the electron-versus-muon measurement, which he said makes for a much “cleaner,” unambiguous observation than the muon angle measurements alone. “This is a Standard Model killer,” he said.
If the B meson anomalies are real, physicists have two leading theories to explain them.
A new, hypothetical force-carrying particle called the Zʹ boson would resemble the standard weak force that turns one matter particle into another, except that it would influence electrons and muons differently. As a bonus, the Zʹ boson would also imply the existence of an additional massive particle that could make up the universe’s missing dark matter. “We are moving to the next step, which is trying not just to explain the anomaly, but to connect the anomaly to other problems,” said Joaquim Matias, a theoretical physicist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Why Do Matter Particles Come in Threes? A Physics Titan Weighs In.
The more exotic possibility is that LHCb researchers are detecting hints of a fabled particle — the leptoquark — that can turn a quark into a lepton and vice versa. Theorists have long contemplated the possibility of leptoquarks, but the idea has grown less popular as experiments have ruled out the simplest kinds. Still, the three-generation quark family tree looks suspiciously like the lepton family tree, and neither pattern is well understood. Decaying B mesons may be revealing a leptoquark link between them. “That’s the dream,” said Zupan.
As theorists consider these possibilities, the LHCb team will have to see if they can flip enough heads to prove that their coin is definitely not standard — an endeavor that may take the rest of the decade.
Ultimately, however, the particle physics community will hold out for confirmation from a different apparatus, such as the Belle II experiment in Japan, or one of the LHC’s two main detectors. Either proving or eliminating the B meson anomalies will be a herculean endeavor, but researchers have all the tools they need. “With four experiments that can chip in,” Zupan said, “the future is bright.”
High time for an LHC update with the resumption of the season close at hand. As you'll all remember, I've been waiting for this since the Big Boy first fired up
Black hole plasma jets are shaped like bell-bottoms
Streams of plasma shooting away from galaxies flare at the ends
Some black holes shoot jets of plasma into space, shown in this artist’s illustration. A new analysis reveals jets that flare out like bell-bottoms.
Daria Sokol/MIPT Press Office
Share this:
By Lisa Grossman
June 18, 2020 at 6:00 am
Jets of high-energy plasma shooting away from supermassive black holes resemble bell-bottom pants — starting out narrow but ending with a flare. The shape can help astrophysicists tease out how such jets are launched and reveal details of their black holes, researchers report in the July Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“From studying this region where the geometric transition happens, we can understand the black hole better,” says astrophysicist Yuri Kovalev of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Most galaxies in the universe host supermassive black holes at the center. Some of those black holes are actively eating a surrounding white-hot disk of gas and dust, and shooting twin jets of high-energy particles many light-years into space. Those black holes and their disks are called active galactic nuclei, or AGN, and are among the brightest objects in the cosmos. Astronomers can see the glow from many billions of light-years away.
For a long time, observations of these jets suggested they had a cone shape, with particles shooting out from the black holes in a straight-legged V. But in the past decade or so, closer looks have shown that some jets start out with a parabolic shape, meaning the sides are slightly curved.
Sign Up For the Latest from Science News
Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox
E-mail* Go
In 2012, astrophysicists reported that a jet launched from nearby galaxy M87 — whose black hole became the first to have its picture taken in 2017 (SN: 4/10/19) — starts out parabolic and shifts to cone-shaped at a certain distance. A jet from a second AGN was spotted with a similar flare-legged shape in 2018.
Kovalev and his colleagues wondered if these two galaxies were special somehow, or if bell-bottom jets were common features of AGN. The researchers looked at published observations of 367 AGN throughout the cosmos, spanning more than 20 years. Then the team wrote a computer algorithm to search available images for changes in the jets’ shapes.
Out of that sample, just 10 jets had the shape of flared pants. But surprisingly, all of them were extremely close to Earth, within a billion light-years. “This cannot happen accidentally,” Kovalev says. He expects the other AGN jets would also show bell-bottom legs if astronomers could look with higher-resolution telescopes.
“This transition is a common effect in jets of AGN. We have discovered that this is absolutely typical,” Kovalev says.
Masanori Nakamura, who reported M87’s bell-bottom jets and is now at Japan’s National Institute of Technology in Hachinohe City, thinks that’s a reasonable conclusion. “There is growing consensus that AGN jets may follow such similar evolution,” from parabola to cone shapes, he says. Expanding the collection of known flare-legged jets “is a significant step.”
The shape shift could have to do with how jets are launched from black holes in the first place. Astrophysicists think magnetic fields in the disk around the black hole accelerate the jet particles outward. The material of intergalactic space surrounding the jet also exerts a pressure, keeping the particles bound in a tight column.
But at a certain distance from the black hole, the magnetic fields and the outside pressure stop holding such a big influence over the jet. The particles take off in straight lines, less pushed and less smooshed.
That distance is exactly where the flare appears in the jets, Kovalev and colleagues report. “It’s not a coincidence at all,” Kovalev says. Future observations with more powerful telescopes can help confirm whether more distant quasars are also stuck in the ’70s.
Streams of plasma shooting away from galaxies flare at the ends
You must log in or register to see images
Some black holes shoot jets of plasma into space, shown in this artist’s illustration. A new analysis reveals jets that flare out like bell-bottoms.
Daria Sokol/MIPT Press Office
Share this:
By Lisa Grossman
June 18, 2020 at 6:00 am
Jets of high-energy plasma shooting away from supermassive black holes resemble bell-bottom pants — starting out narrow but ending with a flare. The shape can help astrophysicists tease out how such jets are launched and reveal details of their black holes, researchers report in the July Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“From studying this region where the geometric transition happens, we can understand the black hole better,” says astrophysicist Yuri Kovalev of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Most galaxies in the universe host supermassive black holes at the center. Some of those black holes are actively eating a surrounding white-hot disk of gas and dust, and shooting twin jets of high-energy particles many light-years into space. Those black holes and their disks are called active galactic nuclei, or AGN, and are among the brightest objects in the cosmos. Astronomers can see the glow from many billions of light-years away.
For a long time, observations of these jets suggested they had a cone shape, with particles shooting out from the black holes in a straight-legged V. But in the past decade or so, closer looks have shown that some jets start out with a parabolic shape, meaning the sides are slightly curved.
You must log in or register to see images
Sign Up For the Latest from Science News
Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox
E-mail* Go
In 2012, astrophysicists reported that a jet launched from nearby galaxy M87 — whose black hole became the first to have its picture taken in 2017 (SN: 4/10/19) — starts out parabolic and shifts to cone-shaped at a certain distance. A jet from a second AGN was spotted with a similar flare-legged shape in 2018.
Kovalev and his colleagues wondered if these two galaxies were special somehow, or if bell-bottom jets were common features of AGN. The researchers looked at published observations of 367 AGN throughout the cosmos, spanning more than 20 years. Then the team wrote a computer algorithm to search available images for changes in the jets’ shapes.
Out of that sample, just 10 jets had the shape of flared pants. But surprisingly, all of them were extremely close to Earth, within a billion light-years. “This cannot happen accidentally,” Kovalev says. He expects the other AGN jets would also show bell-bottom legs if astronomers could look with higher-resolution telescopes.
“This transition is a common effect in jets of AGN. We have discovered that this is absolutely typical,” Kovalev says.
Masanori Nakamura, who reported M87’s bell-bottom jets and is now at Japan’s National Institute of Technology in Hachinohe City, thinks that’s a reasonable conclusion. “There is growing consensus that AGN jets may follow such similar evolution,” from parabola to cone shapes, he says. Expanding the collection of known flare-legged jets “is a significant step.”
The shape shift could have to do with how jets are launched from black holes in the first place. Astrophysicists think magnetic fields in the disk around the black hole accelerate the jet particles outward. The material of intergalactic space surrounding the jet also exerts a pressure, keeping the particles bound in a tight column.
But at a certain distance from the black hole, the magnetic fields and the outside pressure stop holding such a big influence over the jet. The particles take off in straight lines, less pushed and less smooshed.
That distance is exactly where the flare appears in the jets, Kovalev and colleagues report. “It’s not a coincidence at all,” Kovalev says. Future observations with more powerful telescopes can help confirm whether more distant quasars are also stuck in the ’70s.
The FDA has canceled emergency use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19
The risks of giving the malaria drug don’t outweigh the benefits, the agency rules
Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work against the coronavirus, the FDA says. The agency revoked authorization for treating COVID-19 patients with the drug outside of clinical trials.
amlanmathur/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Share this:
By Tina Hesman Saey
June 15, 2020 at 5:31 pm
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine no longer have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s blessing for use against coronavirus infections when given outside of a clinical trial.
In March, the agency authorized using the malaria drugs for hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who couldn’t participate in clinical trials. But the legal criteria for issuing an emergency use authorization are no longer met, the agency said in a statement June 15.
Trustworthy journalism comes at a price.
Scientists and journalists share a core belief in questioning, observing and verifying to reach the truth. Science News reports on crucial research and discovery across science disciplines. We need your financial support to make it happen – every contribution makes a difference.
Subscribe or Donate Now
The drugs are “unlikely to produce an antiviral effect,” Denise Hinton, the agency’s chief scientist noted in a June 15 letter of revocation. Studies have shown that the drugs are no better than a placebo for preventing COVID-19 in people exposed to the coronavirus and don’t speed recovery for those with serious illness (SN: 6/4/20; SN: 4/21/20). “The totality of scientific evidence currently available indicate a lack of benefit,” the agency statement said.
After reviewing evidence, it’s “no longer reasonable to believe that [hydroxychloroquine] and [chloroquine] may be effective in treating COVID-19,” Hinton wrote. The drugs’ risks, which can include disruptions of heart rhythms, don’t outweigh the benefits of using them, she wrote.
Sign up for e-mail updates on the latest coronavirus news and research[/paste:font]
The ruling came at the request of Gary Disbrow, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The agency, within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, is tasked with evaluating vaccines, drugs and therapies to combat threats to national security and public health.
In addition, the FDA warned June 15 that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine shouldn’t be given in combination with remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has been shown to shorten recovery time from COVID-19 (SN: 4/29/20). The malaria drugs reduced remdesivir’s antiviral activity in laboratory experiments, the agency said in a statement.
Hydroxychloroquine may continue to be sold in the United States for already FDA-approved purposes, such as for treating lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The version of chloroquine that previously was authorized for emergency use was not distributed and isn’t available for use. People who are hospitalized and already being treated with the drugs may continue to receive them under their doctors’ orders, and clinical trials may still go forward. Doctors also can continue to prescribe the drugs for “off label” use.
Good old Donald
The risks of giving the malaria drug don’t outweigh the benefits, the agency rules
You must log in or register to see images
Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work against the coronavirus, the FDA says. The agency revoked authorization for treating COVID-19 patients with the drug outside of clinical trials.
amlanmathur/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Share this:
By Tina Hesman Saey
June 15, 2020 at 5:31 pm
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine no longer have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s blessing for use against coronavirus infections when given outside of a clinical trial.
In March, the agency authorized using the malaria drugs for hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who couldn’t participate in clinical trials. But the legal criteria for issuing an emergency use authorization are no longer met, the agency said in a statement June 15.
You must log in or register to see images
Trustworthy journalism comes at a price.
Scientists and journalists share a core belief in questioning, observing and verifying to reach the truth. Science News reports on crucial research and discovery across science disciplines. We need your financial support to make it happen – every contribution makes a difference.
Subscribe or Donate Now
The drugs are “unlikely to produce an antiviral effect,” Denise Hinton, the agency’s chief scientist noted in a June 15 letter of revocation. Studies have shown that the drugs are no better than a placebo for preventing COVID-19 in people exposed to the coronavirus and don’t speed recovery for those with serious illness (SN: 6/4/20; SN: 4/21/20). “The totality of scientific evidence currently available indicate a lack of benefit,” the agency statement said.
After reviewing evidence, it’s “no longer reasonable to believe that [hydroxychloroquine] and [chloroquine] may be effective in treating COVID-19,” Hinton wrote. The drugs’ risks, which can include disruptions of heart rhythms, don’t outweigh the benefits of using them, she wrote.
Sign up for e-mail updates on the latest coronavirus news and research[/paste:font]
The ruling came at the request of Gary Disbrow, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The agency, within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, is tasked with evaluating vaccines, drugs and therapies to combat threats to national security and public health.
In addition, the FDA warned June 15 that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine shouldn’t be given in combination with remdesivir, an antiviral drug that has been shown to shorten recovery time from COVID-19 (SN: 4/29/20). The malaria drugs reduced remdesivir’s antiviral activity in laboratory experiments, the agency said in a statement.
Hydroxychloroquine may continue to be sold in the United States for already FDA-approved purposes, such as for treating lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The version of chloroquine that previously was authorized for emergency use was not distributed and isn’t available for use. People who are hospitalized and already being treated with the drugs may continue to receive them under their doctors’ orders, and clinical trials may still go forward. Doctors also can continue to prescribe the drugs for “off label” use.
Good old Donald
CERN backs new £19 BILLION particle accelerator that is four times bigger and six times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider
LIGO and Virgo detected a collision between a black hole and a mystery object
Gravitational wave measurements put the object’s mass between a neutron star and a black hole
In a first, the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have spotted a collision between a black hole (illustrated left) and a mystery object (right), which could be either the heaviest neutron star ever discovered or the lightest black hole.
R. HURT/MIT/CALTECH/LIGO (IPAC)
Share this:
By Maria Temming
17 HOURS AGO
Ripples in spacetime have revealed a distant collision between a black hole and a mystery object, which appears too massive to be a neutron star but not massive enough to be a black hole.
At first glance, the event — detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors on August 14, 2019 — looked like a collision between a black hole and neutron star (SN: 8/15/19). But a new analysis of the gravitational waves emanating from the merger tells a different story. It shows that a black hole about 23 times as massive as the sun crashed into a compact object of about 2.6 solar masses, researchers report June 23 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
That 2.6-solar-mass object is heavier than the presumed 2.5-solar-mass cap on neutron star size. But it’s smaller than the most lightweight black hole ever observed, which is about five solar masses. “We have [here] either the heaviest known neutron star … or we have the lightest known black hole,” says Cole Miller, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland in College Park not involved in the work.
Neutron stars, which are dense stellar remnants left behind by stellar explosions, are thought to max out at about 2.5 solar masses because any larger star is liable to crumple under its own weight. Black holes less than about five solar masses are theoretically possible, “we just have had no observational evidence of such low-mass black holes,” says coauthor Vicky Kalogera, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. That could mean such objects are very rare, or that they’re just so difficult to spot that they’ve been overlooked in past searches.
Gravitational wave measurements put the object’s mass between a neutron star and a black hole
You must log in or register to see images
In a first, the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have spotted a collision between a black hole (illustrated left) and a mystery object (right), which could be either the heaviest neutron star ever discovered or the lightest black hole.
R. HURT/MIT/CALTECH/LIGO (IPAC)
Share this:
By Maria Temming
17 HOURS AGO
Ripples in spacetime have revealed a distant collision between a black hole and a mystery object, which appears too massive to be a neutron star but not massive enough to be a black hole.
At first glance, the event — detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors on August 14, 2019 — looked like a collision between a black hole and neutron star (SN: 8/15/19). But a new analysis of the gravitational waves emanating from the merger tells a different story. It shows that a black hole about 23 times as massive as the sun crashed into a compact object of about 2.6 solar masses, researchers report June 23 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
That 2.6-solar-mass object is heavier than the presumed 2.5-solar-mass cap on neutron star size. But it’s smaller than the most lightweight black hole ever observed, which is about five solar masses. “We have [here] either the heaviest known neutron star … or we have the lightest known black hole,” says Cole Miller, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland in College Park not involved in the work.
Neutron stars, which are dense stellar remnants left behind by stellar explosions, are thought to max out at about 2.5 solar masses because any larger star is liable to crumple under its own weight. Black holes less than about five solar masses are theoretically possible, “we just have had no observational evidence of such low-mass black holes,” says coauthor Vicky Kalogera, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. That could mean such objects are very rare, or that they’re just so difficult to spot that they’ve been overlooked in past searches.
Scientists Discover New Exotic Tetraquark Particle Using Large Hadron Collider At CERN
The new discovery of the tetraquark will help scientists study matter particles and strong interactions between them called quantum chromodynamics
Pause
Unmute
Current TimeÂ2:50
DurationÂ4:04
Loaded: 94.41%
Seek to live, currently playing liveLIVE
QualitySD
FullscreenShare
China Building 62-mile-long Supercollider To Produce A Million Higgs Boson Particles
CLOSE
China Building 62-mile-long Supercollider To Produce A Million Higgs Boson Particles
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been one of the greatest gifts for particle physics and it has never ceased to amuse scientists. During CERN's (European Organization for Nuclear Research) latest Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration, physicists discovered a new exotic particle through the atom smasher.
Usually, particles contain two or three quarks but the new particle is made up of four quarks, thus is called tetraquark and is nothing like the other subatomic particles that were discovered previously. Scientists claim that this is the first of its kind that is made up the same class of quarks. The discovery will be of immense help to scientists who want to have a better understanding of the complex ways in which quarks transform into a composite particle.
An artist's impression of a tetraquark particle CERN
What Is A Quark?
A quark is an elementary particle which is one of the building blocks of a matter. In general, subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons found inside atomic nuclei contain three quarks which bind themselves together through nuclear force to make up a matter like humans.
It was only in 2017 that the existence of tetraquarks was acknowledged. This type of configuration is rare while pentaquark (five quarks) was discovered only last year. The existence of a six-quark particle is also possible as per scientists.
"Particles made up of four quarks are already exotic, and the one we have just discovered is the first to be made up of four heavy quarks of the same type, specifically two charm quarks and two charm anti-quarks," said Giovanni Passaleva, the spokesperson of the LHCb collaboration.
What makes the new discovery more interesting is that up until now, tetraquarks with "two heavy quarks at most and none with more than two quarks of the same type". The research paper of the new discovery is, however, pending peer review but it further supports the existence of exotic particles.
How Was it Discovered?
The hunt for the exotic particles is a long process. Particularly, in this discovery, scientists combed through the collision data of the LHC's two runs from 2009-2013 and 2015-2018 which had significant upgrades.
In the new technique, excess collision events of "bumps" were considered. The scientists found the excess in the pair of J/ψ meson particle which contains two quarks — one charm quark and a charm antiquark.
Scientists studied the excess collision events in the LHC Flickr
All the mesons are hadronic subatomic particles that contain a quark and an anti-quark. They are unstable in nature and decay rather quickly — in less than one zeptosecond (10−21 second). Hence, it is difficult to detect. But scientists found a way to deal with that. Mesons decay into muon particles (another elementary particle with a negative electric charge) and researchers used those to discover the tetraquark.
How Is It Going to Help?
The discovery opens up a new chapter in particle physics. Until now, scientists only observed two heavy quarks and none with more than two quarks of similar type. So, it will allow them to study matter particles in extreme case scenarios. It will also help them test models of quantum chromodynamics which is a theory of strong interaction between quarks and gluons — elementary particles that make up proton, neutron and pion.
"These exotic heavy particles provide extreme and yet theoretically fairly simple cases with which to test models that can then be used to explain the nature of ordinary matter particles, like protons or neutrons. It is therefore very exciting to see them appear in collisions at the LHC for the first time," said the LHCb spokesperson, Chris Parkes of the University of Manchester.
However, like previous other tetraquark discoveries, it is still not clear whether the new particle is a true tetraquark. In a proper tetraquark, four quarks tightly bound together or two quark particles weakly bound in a molecule-like structure. Further studies will be conducted on the subject.
Physicists have ‘braided’ strange quasiparticles called anyons
Looping the structures around one another strengthens the case that anyons really exist
Anyons, which show up within 2-D materials, can be looped around one another like rope. Now physicists have observed this “braiding” effect.
BELCHONOCK/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
Share this:
By Emily Conover
4 HOURS AGO
Physicists have captured their first clear glimpse of the tangled web woven by particles called anyons.
The observed effect, known as braiding, is the most striking evidence yet for the existence of anyons — a class of particle that can occur only in two dimensions. When anyons are braided, one anyon is looped around another, altering the anyons’ quantum states. That braiding effect was spotted within a complex layer cake of materials, researchers report in a paper posted June 25 at arXiv.org.
“It’s absolutely convincing,” says theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek of MIT, who coined the term “anyon” in the 1980s. Theoretical physicists have long thought that anyons exist, but “to see it in reality takes it to another level.”
Fundamental particles found in nature fall into one of two classes: fermions or bosons. Electrons, for example, are fermions, whereas photons, particles of light, are bosons. Anyons are a third class, but they wouldn’t appear as fundamental particles in our 3-D universe. “It’s not something you see in standard everyday life,” says physicist Michael Manfra of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., a coauthor of the study. But anyons can show up as disturbances within two-dimensional sheets of material. Technically “quasiparticles,” anyons are the result of collective movements of many electrons, which together behave like one particle.
Sign Up For the Latest from Science News
Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox
E-mail*GO
A key way anyons differ from fermions and bosons is in how they braid. If you were to drag one boson or one fermion around another of its own kind, there would be no record of that looping. But for anyons, such braiding alters the particles’ wave function, the mathematical expression that describes the quantum state of the particles. The process inserts an additional factor, called a phase, into the wave function.
In the new study, the researchers created a device in which anyons traveled within a 2-D layer along a path that split into two. One path looped around other anyons at the device’s center — like a child playing duck, duck, goose with friends — while the other took a direct route. The two paths were reunited, and the researchers measured the resulting electric current.
The extra phase acquired in the trek around the device would alter how the anyons interfere when the paths reunited and thereby affect the current. So the researchers tweaked the voltage and magnetic field on the device, which changed the number of anyons in the center of the loop — like duck, duck, goose with a larger or smaller group of playmates. As anyons were removed or added, that altered the phase, producing distinct jumps in the current.
Seeing the effect required a finely tuned stack of layered materials to screen out other effects that would overshadow the anyons. “It is definitely one of the more complex and complicated things that have been done in experimental physics,” says theoretical physicist Chetan Nayak of Microsoft Quantum and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Previous work had already revealed strong signs of anyons. For example, physicist Gwendal Fève and colleagues looked at what happened when quasiparticles collide with one another (SN: 4/9/20). Together, the two studies make “a very, very robust proof of the existence of anyons,” says Fève, of the Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Like Fève’s work, the new study focuses on a subclass of quasiparticles called abelian anyons. While those quasiparticles have yet to find practical use, some physicists hope that related non-abelian anyons will be useful for building quantum computers that are more robust than today’s error-prone machines (SN: 6/22/20).
The new discovery of the tetraquark will help scientists study matter particles and strong interactions between them called quantum chromodynamics
- By Krishnendu Banerjee
July 5, 2020 19:33 +08
Pause
Unmute
Current TimeÂ2:50
DurationÂ4:04
Loaded: 94.41%
Seek to live, currently playing liveLIVE
QualitySD
FullscreenShare
China Building 62-mile-long Supercollider To Produce A Million Higgs Boson Particles
CLOSE
China Building 62-mile-long Supercollider To Produce A Million Higgs Boson Particles
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been one of the greatest gifts for particle physics and it has never ceased to amuse scientists. During CERN's (European Organization for Nuclear Research) latest Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration, physicists discovered a new exotic particle through the atom smasher.
Usually, particles contain two or three quarks but the new particle is made up of four quarks, thus is called tetraquark and is nothing like the other subatomic particles that were discovered previously. Scientists claim that this is the first of its kind that is made up the same class of quarks. The discovery will be of immense help to scientists who want to have a better understanding of the complex ways in which quarks transform into a composite particle.
You must log in or register to see images
An artist's impression of a tetraquark particle CERN
What Is A Quark?
A quark is an elementary particle which is one of the building blocks of a matter. In general, subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons found inside atomic nuclei contain three quarks which bind themselves together through nuclear force to make up a matter like humans.
It was only in 2017 that the existence of tetraquarks was acknowledged. This type of configuration is rare while pentaquark (five quarks) was discovered only last year. The existence of a six-quark particle is also possible as per scientists.
"Particles made up of four quarks are already exotic, and the one we have just discovered is the first to be made up of four heavy quarks of the same type, specifically two charm quarks and two charm anti-quarks," said Giovanni Passaleva, the spokesperson of the LHCb collaboration.
What makes the new discovery more interesting is that up until now, tetraquarks with "two heavy quarks at most and none with more than two quarks of the same type". The research paper of the new discovery is, however, pending peer review but it further supports the existence of exotic particles.
How Was it Discovered?
The hunt for the exotic particles is a long process. Particularly, in this discovery, scientists combed through the collision data of the LHC's two runs from 2009-2013 and 2015-2018 which had significant upgrades.
In the new technique, excess collision events of "bumps" were considered. The scientists found the excess in the pair of J/ψ meson particle which contains two quarks — one charm quark and a charm antiquark.
You must log in or register to see images
Scientists studied the excess collision events in the LHC Flickr
All the mesons are hadronic subatomic particles that contain a quark and an anti-quark. They are unstable in nature and decay rather quickly — in less than one zeptosecond (10−21 second). Hence, it is difficult to detect. But scientists found a way to deal with that. Mesons decay into muon particles (another elementary particle with a negative electric charge) and researchers used those to discover the tetraquark.
How Is It Going to Help?
The discovery opens up a new chapter in particle physics. Until now, scientists only observed two heavy quarks and none with more than two quarks of similar type. So, it will allow them to study matter particles in extreme case scenarios. It will also help them test models of quantum chromodynamics which is a theory of strong interaction between quarks and gluons — elementary particles that make up proton, neutron and pion.
"These exotic heavy particles provide extreme and yet theoretically fairly simple cases with which to test models that can then be used to explain the nature of ordinary matter particles, like protons or neutrons. It is therefore very exciting to see them appear in collisions at the LHC for the first time," said the LHCb spokesperson, Chris Parkes of the University of Manchester.
However, like previous other tetraquark discoveries, it is still not clear whether the new particle is a true tetraquark. In a proper tetraquark, four quarks tightly bound together or two quark particles weakly bound in a molecule-like structure. Further studies will be conducted on the subject.
Physicists have ‘braided’ strange quasiparticles called anyons
Looping the structures around one another strengthens the case that anyons really exist
You must log in or register to see images
Anyons, which show up within 2-D materials, can be looped around one another like rope. Now physicists have observed this “braiding” effect.
BELCHONOCK/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
Share this:
By Emily Conover
4 HOURS AGO
Physicists have captured their first clear glimpse of the tangled web woven by particles called anyons.
The observed effect, known as braiding, is the most striking evidence yet for the existence of anyons — a class of particle that can occur only in two dimensions. When anyons are braided, one anyon is looped around another, altering the anyons’ quantum states. That braiding effect was spotted within a complex layer cake of materials, researchers report in a paper posted June 25 at arXiv.org.
“It’s absolutely convincing,” says theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek of MIT, who coined the term “anyon” in the 1980s. Theoretical physicists have long thought that anyons exist, but “to see it in reality takes it to another level.”
Fundamental particles found in nature fall into one of two classes: fermions or bosons. Electrons, for example, are fermions, whereas photons, particles of light, are bosons. Anyons are a third class, but they wouldn’t appear as fundamental particles in our 3-D universe. “It’s not something you see in standard everyday life,” says physicist Michael Manfra of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., a coauthor of the study. But anyons can show up as disturbances within two-dimensional sheets of material. Technically “quasiparticles,” anyons are the result of collective movements of many electrons, which together behave like one particle.
You must log in or register to see images
Sign Up For the Latest from Science News
Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox
E-mail*GO
A key way anyons differ from fermions and bosons is in how they braid. If you were to drag one boson or one fermion around another of its own kind, there would be no record of that looping. But for anyons, such braiding alters the particles’ wave function, the mathematical expression that describes the quantum state of the particles. The process inserts an additional factor, called a phase, into the wave function.
In the new study, the researchers created a device in which anyons traveled within a 2-D layer along a path that split into two. One path looped around other anyons at the device’s center — like a child playing duck, duck, goose with friends — while the other took a direct route. The two paths were reunited, and the researchers measured the resulting electric current.
The extra phase acquired in the trek around the device would alter how the anyons interfere when the paths reunited and thereby affect the current. So the researchers tweaked the voltage and magnetic field on the device, which changed the number of anyons in the center of the loop — like duck, duck, goose with a larger or smaller group of playmates. As anyons were removed or added, that altered the phase, producing distinct jumps in the current.
Seeing the effect required a finely tuned stack of layered materials to screen out other effects that would overshadow the anyons. “It is definitely one of the more complex and complicated things that have been done in experimental physics,” says theoretical physicist Chetan Nayak of Microsoft Quantum and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Previous work had already revealed strong signs of anyons. For example, physicist Gwendal Fève and colleagues looked at what happened when quasiparticles collide with one another (SN: 4/9/20). Together, the two studies make “a very, very robust proof of the existence of anyons,” says Fève, of the Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Like Fève’s work, the new study focuses on a subclass of quasiparticles called abelian anyons. While those quasiparticles have yet to find practical use, some physicists hope that related non-abelian anyons will be useful for building quantum computers that are more robust than today’s error-prone machines (SN: 6/22/20).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54133538
WOW!
And this was postulated by the late, great Carl Sagan decades ago. No mission until the '30's though? Here's a thought to boost science and engineering, employment and boost the world economy - why not a multi-national mission ASAP?
WOW!
And this was postulated by the late, great Carl Sagan decades ago. No mission until the '30's though? Here's a thought to boost science and engineering, employment and boost the world economy - why not a multi-national mission ASAP?
"The 'teleportation' is instant, occurring faster than the speed of light, "
Huh. More than just beam me up, that's warp speed stuff there.
That said, important to note these are photons and not matter being teleported.
Okay mate, I know. But instant information though - does it travel ont and back in these four physical dimensions?
