Will matter/anti-matter switching ever result in a useable energy source?

[papau]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=590ac470-b3ab-40d7-90c9-86e39c28b284

<snip>The work's significance? "This measurement has confirmed the Standard Model," says physicist Wendy Taylor of York University, one of the 700 who toiled on the experiment. The Standard Model is the basic theory that physics has used for 30-plus years to explain particle physics.

But, she adds, finding the B-sub-s doesn't go as far as many had hoped in explaining mysteries that still remain in physics, such as how things change between matter and anti-matter.<snip>

And now, a particle switches back and forth, because it contains a quark (even smaller than a meson) that itself goes between matter to anti-matter. A very few other particles also do this, but this is by far the fastest.

"If it had been completely on total disagreement with the Standard Model, then of course that would be the most exciting thing," the York physicist says. "We know there's something out there. We want to find it. But we have to keep looking."

The Fermilab paper has not yet been published.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=590ac470-b3ab-40d7-90c9-86e39c28b284




A meson, such as the B_s, is an unusual particle made up of both matter and antimatter-one quark and one antiquark. The neutral B_s meson is composed of a bottom (or "B") antiquark and a strange ("s") quark.

Scientists of the DZero collider detector collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have announced that their data on the properties of a subatomic particle, the B_s meson ("B sub s"), suggest that the particle oscillates between matter and antimatter in one of nature's fastest rapid-fire processes-more than 17 trillion times per second. Their findings may affect the current view of matter-antimatter asymmetry, and might also offer a first glimpse of the contributions of new physics, such as supersymmetry, to particle physics.

The DZero result, suggesting a preferred oscillation frequency between 17 and 21 times per picosecond (trillionth of a second), is described in a paper submitted to the journal, Physical Review Letters. The result, a measure of the oscillation or "mixing" frequency of the particle, has a confidence level of 90 percent, and so does not qualify as a discovery. Physicists have agreed that claims of a discovery must have a confidence level of 99.99995 percent, indicating a 99.99995 percent chance that the result can be reproduced.

The data for the DZero result were culled from one inverse femtobarn of total collision data, or more than one billion events from Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator -- a milestone capitalizing on the significant luminosity improvements in the Tevatron. The DZero result also sets the stage for future results. Within the next month or so, the CDF collider detector collaboration at Fermilab expects to have a result with greater precision than the DZero result.

Many theoretical models of supersymmetry predict a much faster oscillation of B_s mesons than has been reported by DZero, and are therefore disfavored by the new data.

[soothsayer]

1. Take her to warp 3, and let's get the heck outa' here!

[papau]

2. Star Trek does come to mind - a 1966 series that used 80's info? hmmm

Actually Scottie never disclosed how the anti-matter drive worked beyond those crystals that were always needing repair, now did he? :-)