-
Contents
- Sweet Confusion: Does high fructose corn syrup deserve such a bad rap?
- Closed Thinking: Without scientific competition and open debate, much psychology research goes nowhere
- subscribe
- give a gift
- renew
- RSS Feeds
- email alerts
- Digital Edition
- Podcast
- Past issues
-
Contents
- Better chow yields more milk: A more nutritious form of corn for dairy cows boosts farm profits, teen investigator finds
- Fuzzy future: Kids may suffer impaired vision from spending too little time outdoors, studies suggest
- Building with moon rocks: Working on the moon with lunar soil and grit could prove easier, more efficient and less costly than using earthly materials
Web edition: August 27, 2010
Print edition: September 11, 2010; Vol.178 #6 (p. 4)
PRIMARY CLUE TO MATTER — The shortest lifetime of an elementary particle — only a quarter of a millionth of a billionth of a second — gives a primary clue to the structure of matter.... [S]cientists have known for about ten years of the neutral pi-meson and have been trying to pin down its lifetime. The new measurement gives theoretical physicists a new universal constant and now they must figure out why it exists or relate it to another constant. When the neutral pi-meson breaks up or decays, two photons of light are produced. These high energy photons, or gamma rays, are purely electromagnetic in character. Thus the new measurement links mesons and the electromagnetic field for the first time.
Please alert Science News to any inappropriate posts by clicking the REPORT SPAM link within the post. Comments will be reviewed before posting.
You must register with Science News to add a comment. To log-in click here. To register as a new user, follow this link.