Among the many particles that resulted from this crash were
bizarre objects called anti-hypertritons. Not only are these things antimatter,
but they're also what's called strange matter. Where normal atomic nuclei are
made of protons and neutrons (which are made of "up" quarks and
"down" quarks), strange nuclei also have so-called Lambda particles
that contain another flavor of quark called "strange" as well. These
Lambda particles orbit around the protons and neutrons.
If all that is a little much to straighten out, just think
of anti-hypertritons as several kinds of weird.
Though they normally don't exist on Earth, these particles
may be hiding in the universe in very hot, dense places like the centers of
some stars, and most likely were around when the universe was extremely young
and energetic, and all the matter was packed into a very small, sweltering
space.
"This is the first time they've ever been created in a laboratory
or a situation where they can be studied," said researcher Carl Gagliardi
of Texas A&M University. "We don't have anti-nuclei sitting around on
a shelf that we can use to put anti-strangeness into. Only a few anti-nuclei
have been observed so far."
These particles weren't around for too long, though – in
fact, they didn't last long enough to collide with normal matter and
annihilate. Instead they just decayed after a fraction of a billionth of a
second.
"that sounds like a really short time, but in fact on
the nuclear clock it's actually a long time," Gagliardi told SPACE.com.
"In that fraction of a billionth of a second that Lambda particle has already
gone around the nucleus as many times as the Earth has gone around the sun since
the solar system was created."
thinkahol * on 11 May 11When a cycad is ready to reproduce, it grows a large colorful cone, rich with pollen or seed. It signals its readiness by radiating heat or sending out attractive odors to pollinators, who travel back and forth. Once fertilized, the seed-rich cone is ripped apart by hungry seed carriers (who've included over the years, not just birds and insects, but dinosaurs, pterosaurs, bats; these trees have been eaten by just about everybody). But what if you can't find a mate? The tree in London (and its clones that are now growing in botanical gardens all over the world) is a male. It can make pollen. But it can't make the seeds. that requires a female. Researchers have wandered the Ngoya forest and other woods of Africa, looking for an E. woodii that could pair with the one in London. They haven't found a single other specimen. They're still searching. Unless a female exists somewhere, E. woodii will never mate with one of its own. It can be cloned. It can have the occasional fling with a closely related species. Hybrid cycads are sold at plant stores, but those plants aren't the real deal. The tree that sits in London can't produce a true offspring. It sits there, the last in its long line, waiting for a companion that may no longer exist.
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