Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Weird Science

There was an article on Yahoo recently about the discovery of an exotic hadron. It went something along these lines. Exotic hadrons exist. Exotic hadrons are a form of matter that does not fit in the traditional model of particle physics. Hadrons are subatomic particles made up of quarks and antiquarks. The two types of quarks have the same mass but opposite charges. They interact with the strong force that bonds protons together in the nuclei of atoms. Scientists have discovered a particle which appears to be made of two quarks and two antiquarks. The standard model of physics allows for two kinds of hadrons. Baryons such as protons are made up of three quarks. Mesons are made up of a quark-antiquark pair.

What does all this mean? Damned if I know, I'm not a particle physicist. I miss the good old days when atoms were made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Now all those fundamental pieces of matter are made of even smaller things. Two things are beyond my ability to comprehend. First, the vast infinite nature of the universe with all it's mystery. Second, the tiny world of the subatomic. You could reasonably add a third thing, women. They are as confusing as the other two.

Some of the comments about the article were interesting. Several folks, most likely all men started reading the article because they glanced and thought scientists had discovered an exotic hardon. Really guys? Trolling scientific articles on the hope science has discovered a mysterious boner. If they had would it change your life? It is folks like these that make me think humanity is doomed. I may not understand what a hadron is but I read well enough not to confuse it with a hardon.

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