Majorana fermions (found at sciencemag.org)
I meet myself
and greet myself
and find myself
no more
I had no idea what this term referred to, at all. So I did some research while waiting for my web seminar to begin. There has been a flurry of internet posting about this article recently, from the BBC, to Nature.com, to refereed journal articles such as this abstract found at Harvard’s website.
I have read enough to know that in 1935 Ettore Majorana predicted this particle, which is a sort of self-created antiparticle. If I understand correctly: in the same way that an electron that meets a positron flashes out in a spectacular burst of energy, these strange particles do the same thing with their own kind! It has to do with quantum physics, an area that I know little about, so my understanding is necessarily limited. However, I figured out enough to know that if the rumors are true, then some of the things we have taken for granted all these millennia of human existence, may have to be rethought. Somewhat along the lines of my poem from yesterday!