ASingularlyUnfeminineProfession

A Singularly Unfeminine Profession (Mary k Gaillard)

  • T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang addressed an apparent puzzle in the decays of kaons by suggesting that nature was not invariant under parity and charge conjugation separately, but that CP was still conserved.

  • The consistency of the theory is destroyed unless the electric charges of the fermions and antifermions sum to zero separately.

    Charm had to be taken seriously, b/c without it the theory made no sense beyond the lowest order in the number of interactions.

  • The charm interpretation of the new particle was far from universally accepted at the time. There was a competeting theory that posited that "colored" bound states of quarks should exist.

    Then came the long wait for "open charm"

  • The confusion in the search for charm at SLAC had been further compounded by the production of a new charged lepton (tau) with a mass very close to the D-meson. Similar to the pi-mu- confusion.

    The tau was discovered in emu+MeT

  • The assumption that the matter asymmetry was generated by the decays of the very heavy particles in a GUT. This is no longer considered the most likely source b/c of inflation.

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