lorenzohess 6 hours ago

> After almost two decades of searching, a team of physicists in China says it has observed strong evidence of a mysterious particle called a glueball, which is made entirely of force-carrying particles. > ... The discovery of glueballs would provide direct evidence that gluons can interact with themselves, researchers say. This is a key prediction of quantum chromodynamics

  • strictnein 4 hours ago

    > "quantum chromodynamics"

    I had to google it: "the study of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons"

    • _kulang 1 hour ago

      It’s the theory of colour charge essentially, counterpart to electrodynamics. Quarks have colour, rather than electrical charge. Mediating particle is the gluon, analogous to (but entirely different from) the photon

hdivider 2 hours ago

Isn't it significant in some sense that this was discovered in China first, and not the US?

In the sense of: we didn't know splitting the atom would change warfare forever, back when Einstein and others published on it. We don't know if there are discoveries of similar impact lying in wait somewhere. If China gets to such a discovery first, we are in Sputnik territory, to say the least.

  • colechristensen 1 hour ago

    Plenty of things get discovered all over the world and this isn't a particularly earth shattering result. Discovering evidence of a particle predicted for 50 years is interesting but still pretty mundane.

    The LHC which is doing much of the particle physics discovery is in Switzerland and France, if you need to be reminded, not the US.

    The first strong force theory was published by Hideki Yukawa in Japan in 1935 (which won him the nobel prize) ... so uh, not exactly a sputnik problem.

    Sputnik problems (and the nuclear race) are engineering and industrial races, not fundamental physics ones.

  • EA-3167 1 hour ago

    HEP is undeniably an international effort, and it's silly to try and spin this into something akin to the space race. While this is a useful and frankly brilliant potential confirmation of existing theory, that's what it is: confirmation (sort of). Without CERN, without universities across the world including all across Asia none of this would be possible.

    Very few endeavors are as truly international as this because the problems are so hard to even explore, and the machines required to do so are the most complex and highly engineered on Earth. Lets not lose that international spirit in science because the blowhard narcissists who run our countries would find that temporarily useful to them.

  • prometheus1992 1 hour ago

    you are trying to see something that's not quite there in this case. there is shit ton of very good research that happens all over the world. but i also sympathize with what you are trying insinuate and that's also probably happening.

  • wiml 49 minutes ago

    But nuclear fission was discovered by scientists working in Nazi Germany (except Meitner who had fled to Sweden by then).

cat-whisperer 3 hours ago

are we going to have force-fields now?

  • krapp 3 hours ago

    No.

    • yndoendo 3 hours ago

      I thought a Plasma Window is a form of force-field.

      • GroksBarnacles 2 hours ago

        Plasma is matter, not a force

        • foobarian 2 hours ago

          Yet what is matter but a (strong) force

          • krapp 2 hours ago

            Matter is not a force. Matter and forces are two different things in physics.

            And the "strong force" is another thing altogether.

            • aeonik 1 hour ago

              I think their point might be that matter is what defines the location of the force field. I.e. it's the EM field doing the actual work.

Hobadee 3 hours ago

And here I am, thinking I discovered "glueballs" in elementary school when we were given rubber cement to use.