FIGHT FOR THE NAKED QUARK

摘要

It was a true clash of the titans. In the blue corner: a multimillion-dollar particle accelerator. In the red: one of the world's most powerful supercomputers. Both were battling to pin down the lifetime of an ephemeral subatomic particle known as the D-meson. Their deadline was 30 June. Two days ahead of their target, the 20 or so theorists behind the supercomputer announced their answer. For 48 nail-biting hours, they waited for their rival's result. They knew that if their numbers tallied, the supercomputer approach would have what it takes to revolutionise our understanding of the subatomic world. So when the 150-strong team at the accelerator finally announced that its answer matched, the theorists were over the moon. It is a pretty impressive achievement, even by today's standards in theoretical physics. For 30 years, researchers have been battling to make sense of the strong force - the glue that sticks protons and neutrons together in nuclei. Yet their best mathematical theory has been so complex that no one could turn the dense equations into useful predictions.