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Published online 3 November 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1203

News

Spectral particles spook physicsts

Ghostly visitors appear inside Tevatron accelerator.

Unexplained 'ghost particles' are mysteriously appearing inside a US-based high-energy physics experiment.

Bloggers and theorists are already lining up explanations that involve unseen particles, hypothetical strings, or modifications of conventional physics.

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  • when similarly charged particles and antiparticles (need not be particles' own respective antiparticles) collide they may be forming so far unknown particles which might be appearing as a rather new phenomenon as discovered in the cited experiments.

    • 04 Nov, 2008
    • Posted by: vijayakumar krishnan
  • as I understand it muons are easy to detetct. It looks like real phenomemnon.

    • 04 Nov, 2008
    • Posted by: neil farbstein
  • That would be really interesting if they found other particles behaving like muons. They might be useful for catalyzing muonic fusion.

    • 04 Nov, 2008
    • Posted by: neil farbstein
  • It is getting rather close to 2012. I am an existentialist, but still, this so called day may have a prelude. It's nice to just be a bystander and watch what happens to bright people when they find the unexpected. Do these spectres resemble bugles? RT

    • 04 Nov, 2008
    • Posted by: RAY TOSTADO