Unparticles

“To my mind, unparticles would be a much more striking discovery than supersymmetry or extra dimensions,” says Georgi. ❋ Julianne (2008)

Under scale invariance, matter loses all sense of perspective, and distance is no longer important, says Francesco Sannino of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, who has also studied unparticles. ❋ Julianne (2008)

This has a remarkable effect on the strength of the force holding unparticles together. ❋ Julianne (2008)

More than 95 papers have now been written investigating the peculiar facets of unparticles - a level of research on a subject that has not been seen since 1998, when theorists including Dimopoulos proposed that extra dimensions could be large enough to be detected (Physics Letters B, vol 429, p 623). ❋ Julianne (2008)

One of the most recent hot topics in particle theory, unparticles are a suggestion from Howard Georgi that you could detect what looks like a fractional number of new particles, if there were a set of fields with perfect scale invariance (no masses or other parameters to judge their “size”). ❋ Sean (2008)

Recently, Hooman Davoudiasl of Brookhaven National Laboratory has investigated some basic requirements that unparticles must fulfill to ensure that our standard picture of the universe remains intact. ❋ William Harryman (2007)

~ Physicists Build Unparticle Models Guided by Big Bang and Supernovae -- Cosmology and astrophysics may help guide physicists in building a model of “unparticles,” a newly proposed sector of physics. ❋ William Harryman (2007)

Georgi reserves judgement on whether his unparticles really could be the key to solving the dark matter problem until more work is done, but he’s pleased that people are investigating the possibility. ❋ Julianne (2008)