Pyrian
Outlander
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FOR SCIENCE! 8)
So, free neutrons decay into a proton and electron (and an anti-neutrino and sometimes a gamma ray). Physicists have tried to measure the half-life of this decay, and they've run into a problem: If you measure the protons generated ("beam" technique), you get one answer, and if you measure the neutrons disappearing ("bottle" technique) you get a different answer. Attempts to bring down the error term have been pretty successful, except they only confirm that the discrepancy seems to be real.
The obvious possibility is that a rather substantial number of neutrons are decaying without producing a proton. And that's very interesting, if it's true. But nobody's got a good answer that's both detectable and detected.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neutron-lifetime-mystery-new-physics/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutron-lifetime-puzzle-deepens-but-no-dark-matter-seen-20180213/
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/new-measurement-neutron-lifetime-still-puzzling
So, free neutrons decay into a proton and electron (and an anti-neutrino and sometimes a gamma ray). Physicists have tried to measure the half-life of this decay, and they've run into a problem: If you measure the protons generated ("beam" technique), you get one answer, and if you measure the neutrons disappearing ("bottle" technique) you get a different answer. Attempts to bring down the error term have been pretty successful, except they only confirm that the discrepancy seems to be real.
The obvious possibility is that a rather substantial number of neutrons are decaying without producing a proton. And that's very interesting, if it's true. But nobody's got a good answer that's both detectable and detected.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neutron-lifetime-mystery-new-physics/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutron-lifetime-puzzle-deepens-but-no-dark-matter-seen-20180213/
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/new-measurement-neutron-lifetime-still-puzzling
