July 01, 2005
      
Physics researchers working at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) Laboratory in Japan have observed a new type of interaction among the most fundamental of particles, the quark. The scientists reported at the Symposium on Lepton-Photon Interactions at High Energies, June 30-July 5 in Uppsala, Sweden, that they had produced first evidence of a beauty quark converting to the lightest of quarks, the down quark.

"Observation of this very rare phenomenon allows us to study if this occurs only through the so-called penguin process (a two-step transition wherein the beauty quark momentarily transforms into the top quark that subsequently transforms into the down quark) as predicted by the standard theory, or through some hitherto unobserved way," said Leo Piilonen, Virginia Tech physics professor and a member of the Belle experiment's research team.

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Beauty converts to down? Take a gander at that! Somebody goose me, I must be dreaming. I knew something was draining the beauty of the world, but I thought it was Time, not the anorak industry!!


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