{"id":4852,"date":"2010-02-17T03:00:45","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T08:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=4852"},"modified":"2010-02-17T03:00:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T08:00:45","slug":"stop-in-the-name-of-physics-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/4852","title":{"rendered":"Stop! In the Name of Physics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/16\/science\/16quark.html\">In Brookhaven Collider, Scientists Briefly Break a Law of Nature<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The departure from normal physics manifested itself in the apparent ability of the briefly freed quarks to tell right from left. That breaks one of the fundamental laws of nature, known as parity, which requires that the laws of physics remain unchanged if we view nature in a mirror.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ok, that&#8217;s interesting \u2014 that the reaction violated parity conservation, which I imagine has implications for the matter\/antimatter asymmetry issue (I have long wondered if symmetry violation conditions changed with energy, and now it appears that they can and do).  But if a reaction violates parity conservation, then parity conservation is not a law of nature; at best you have a &#8220;parity conservation zone.&#8221;  Laws of nature describe how nature behaves.  Whatever nature does, it is in accordance with these laws.<\/p>\n<p>The editor who came up with the title needs to write &#8220;It is impossible to violate the laws of nature&#8221; a thousand times.<\/p>\n<p>For more on the science, and confirmation that this follows, rather than breaks, the laws of physics, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/02\/16\/violating-parity-with-quarks-and-gluons\/\">Cosmic Variance<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Update:  for some backstory on parity violation, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/news.discovery.com\/space\/symmetry-its-more-like-a-guideline.html\">Symmetry:  It&#8217;s More Like a Guideline<\/a> about the confirmation of how weak interactions don&#8217;t &#8220;keep to the code.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Brookhaven Collider, Scientists Briefly Break a Law of Nature The departure from normal physics manifested itself in the apparent ability of the briefly freed quarks to tell right from left. That breaks one of the fundamental laws of nature, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/4852\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}