Particle that behaves like matter and antimatter found: Majorana fermion

Still great Boffin stuff.

So they might have evidence of a Majorana fermion, but what ever is really happening other people can take a peek without having massive colliders etc.

Special? Maybe in some ways

There's nothing particularly special about a particle being its own anti-particle. This is true of the photon and the Higgs boson, for example.

Desktop quantum computing?

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the CPU coolers they'll need...

Breakthrough!

I think that physicist have here opened the door to somethimg much larger--something which will eventuallly refute the Standard Model.

Majorana Fermion

Didn't he play for Madrid?

"To test this out the Princeton boffins built a ridged base plate of ultra-pure crystals of lead..."

"...and laid down a wire of pure iron one atom wide and three atoms thick on one of the ridges."

Yeah, that's, that's, that's pretty much they way I'd have gone about it. Yeah. I'd have painted it a different colour, though.

Does this give a lead to what dark matter might be?

As a long-time armchair wonderer... if it is matter and anti-matter cancelling each other out and if it is observed by the fact it creates holes in the places other stuff is expected to be you are observing it by the presence of an effect and the absence of an actual observation. That sounds somewhat familiar over on the Dark Side. Doesn't it?

question

If, at this level, observation tends to modify or even create behaviors, and we're reasonably sure that with enough energy mass can be created, is it possible that by the extensive effort of explicitly searching for a given theoretical particle, scientists may inadvertently be creating it or causing the effects they seek?

Most of these exotic particle experiments are so specific as they seem to the layman unable to observe, confirm or deny anything but the specific particle or phenomena sought. All this hardware, all the specialized sensors and extreme conditions - not able to "see what happens" but only to confirm a razor focussed hypothesis.

Is it possible that physics has reached a point where it's almost impossible for a "hmm, that's weird" observation of something tangental that can lead to a new avenue of investigation? A type of "myopia" that this hyperspecialization that appears required at these size and power levels? Are we pushing so hard that our methods adding squirrels to Shroedinger's Box?