browning@ttidcb.UUCP (George Browning) (01/15/86)
There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times which said a fifth force had been discovered. It is called hypercharge and is about 100 times weaker than gravity. It changes the answer of the old question of whether a feather or a iron ball will hit first if dropped in a vacuum; the feather hits first as iron has a higher hypercharge. I have been unable to find any other references to this new force and would be interested in reading anything else available on it. Is it for real?
ams@philabs.UUCP (Ali Shaik) (01/15/86)
> > There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times which said > a fifth force had been discovered. It is called hypercharge and is :-) This should send the Unification fiends back to the drawing board! BTW I saw a report on the same thing in the NY Times. Ali "Bangalore" Shaik (ihnp4!philabs!ams)
rimey@ernie.BERKELEY.EDU (Ken &) (01/16/86)
This fifth force has NOT been "discovered". Its existence has been SUGGESTED, based on the reanalysis of some old experiments. I expect that there are at least a few grad students out there rushing to throw together experiments to test this. We should hear soon. This talk of "hypercharge" is strange to many including me. Apparently hypercharge is equal to baryon number for ordinary matter. So forget hypercharge and talk about baryon number. Finally, this publicity IS about something real, premature perhaps, but not quackery. The paper they are talking about is "Reanalysis of the Eotvos Experiment" by Fischbach, et. al. in Physical Review Letters, January 6, 1986. I would like to know how the original Eotvos experiment was done. I have the paper, but it's in German. Would anyone care to look it up and report back to us? Ken Rimey rimey@dali.berkeley.edu
ins_asma@jhunix.UUCP (Sandra Marie Aamodt) (01/16/86)
Could someone post a reading list on Superstring Theory? I'll wade through technical journals but I'd rather have informative popular literature (assuming that isn't a contradiction in terms.) Oh, and by the way; Hypercharge? Mark!
dobro@ulowell.UUCP (Chet Dobro) (01/21/86)
> > > > There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times which said > > a fifth force had been discovered. It is called hypercharge and is > > ????? Does anyone have any more information on this? Gryphon
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (01/23/86)
In article <174@ulowell.UUCP> dobro@ulowell.UUCP (Chet Dobro) writes: >> >> There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times which said >> a fifth force had been discovered. It is called hypercharge and is > > >Does anyone have any more information on this? > Yes, the newspapers jumped the gun a little bit, and misrepresented the research as well. Someone has performed a reanalysis of certain minor anomolies in some old experiments to *suggest* that there *might* be a fifth force. Another author has since asserted that the reanalysis is faulty and there is no basis for postulating a fifth force. -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen ARPA: ttidca!psivax!friesen@rand-unix.arpa
ins_adsf@jhunix.UUCP (David S Fry) (01/24/86)
> > There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times which said > a fifth force had been discovered. It is called hypercharge and is > about 100 times weaker than gravity. It changes the answer of the old > question of whether a feather or a iron ball will hit first if dropped > in a vacuum; the feather hits first as iron has a higher hypercharge. > I have been unable to find any other references to this new force and > would be interested in reading anything else available on it. Is it > for real? The original paper can be found in Physical Review Letters (I don't know which issue, but very recently I would assume). It was inspired by recent anomalies in data from accelerator labs. The authors, principally Ephraim Fischbach, then went back to look at the data from a famous 1922 torsion experiment by Roland von Eotvos. The force is hypothesized to act on particles no more than 600 feet apart. The theory is certainly "for real", and the paper was actually publ- ished, but, as Harvard's Sheldon Glashow says, "The work suggests an inter- esting direction, but by no means should be taken as a real discovery." (from Time magazine, 1/11/86) -David Fry
sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon) (01/27/86)
In article <982@psivax.UUCP> friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes: >In article <174@ulowell.UUCP> dobro@ulowell.UUCP (Chet Dobro) writes: >>> There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times which said >>> a fifth force had been discovered. It is called hypercharge and is >>... >>Does anyone have any more information on this? >>... > Yes, the newspapers jumped the gun a little bit, and >misrepresented the research as well. Someone has performed a >... >since asserted that the reanalysis is faulty and there is no basis for >postulating a fifth force. >... 1) Look in last week's Newsweek or Time. Or "the newspapers", if you can find the article. Then you'll at least have the people's names. 2) If hypercharge is really important to you (your neutron accelerator functions, or your car won't go into the garage :-) then telegram the researcher and exchange results. 3) Wait 6-12 months for other publications with longer lead time to pick up the story and do a citation or author search at your library. (It's easy..just like using a big index) 4) Come back to the net and let us know the net helped cause yet another breakthrough :-) "Lord, it's hard to be humble when you grew up in a library." -- Scot E. Wilcoxon Minn. Ed. Comp. Corp. quest!mecc!sewilco 45 03 N / 93 15 W (612)481-3507 {ihnp4,mgnetp}!dicomed!mecc!sewilco
tino@hou2f.UUCP (A.TINO) (01/28/86)
>The original paper can be found in Physical Review Letters (I don't >know which issue, but very recently I would assume). Physical Review Letters; Vol 56, number 1, 6 January 1986, page 3 "Reanalysis of the Eotvos Experiment" E. Fischbach, D. Sudarsky, A. Szafer, C. Talmadge, & S.H. Aronson