This is actually a nutria—not to be confused with a neutrino, which would have far less mass

Scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, announced yesterday the first results of the MINOS experiment, which corroborate an experimental result from 1998 that suggested that a class of subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass. This deviates from the Standard Model of particle physics—which predicts the number and behavior of subatomic particles and depends on a massless neutrino—and indicates that the model needs to be revised, or replaced with a more accurate one. Now, if we could only find the Higgs boson. —Martha Harbison

The Paper

"Quark Disasters." Delivered at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Festival, Glasgow, Scotland, September 2001


The Author

Benjamin Allenach, European Center for
Nuclear Research (CERN)


The Gist

Think quarks, leptons, and bosons are too small to harm you? Think again. Someday, they and their sister particles could unmake your whole cosmos.