![]() But is this a good strategy?Įxperimental particle physicists know of the problem, and try to distance themselves from what their colleagues in theory development do. An army of typewriting monkeys may also sometimes produce a useful sentence. They justify their work by claiming that it is good practice, or that every once in a while one of them accidentally comes up with an idea that is useful for something else. Talk to particle physicists in private, and many of them will admit they do not actually believe those particles exist. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) hasn’t seen any of those particles either, even though, before its launch, many theoretical physicists were confident it would see at least a few. However, we do not know that dark matter is indeed made of particles and even if it is, to explain astrophysical observations one does not need to know details of the particles’ behaviour. We even had a (luckily short-lived) fad of “unparticles”.Īll experiments looking for those particles have come back empty-handed, in particular those that have looked for particles that make up dark matter, a type of matter that supposedly fills the universe and makes itself noticeable by its gravitational pull. Since the 1980s, physicists have invented an entire particle zoo, whose inhabitants carry names like preons, sfermions, dyons, magnetic monopoles, simps, wimps, wimpzillas, axions, flaxions, erebons, accelerons, cornucopions, giant magnons, maximons, macros, wisps, fips, branons, skyrmions, chameleons, cuscutons, planckons and sterile neutrinos, to mention just a few. Many of these tests have actually been done, and more are being commissioned as we speak. It has become common among physicists to invent new particles for which there is no evidence, publish papers about them, write more papers about these particles’ properties, and demand the hypothesis be experimentally tested. But almost every particle physics conference has sessions just like this, except they do it with more maths. The research was published in the journal Lancet Planetary Healthy.Kudos to zoologists, I’ve never heard of such a conference. “This means that air quality regulation should recognise this transfer during gestation and act to protect the most susceptible stages of human development.” “We show in this study that the number of black carbon particles that get into the mother is passed on proportionally to the placenta and into the baby. Professor Tim Nawrot, of Hasselt University, said: “We know that exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and infancy has been linked with stillbirth, preterm birth, low weight babies and disturbed brain development, with consequences persisting throughout life.” Manmade air pollution is already known to cause long-term health effects such as heart disease and lung cancer and is thought to be responsible for between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths in Britain each year.īut the new study suggests that it could also be having an impact early in life. This means that it is possible for these nanoparticles to directly interact with control systems within human foetal organs and cells.”īlack carbon is a sooty black material released into the air from internal combustion engines, coal-fired power plants, and other sources that burn fossil fuel. “What is even more worrying is that these black carbon particles also get into the developing human brain. “What we have shown for the first time is that black carbon air pollution nanoparticles not only get into the first and second trimester placenta but then also find their way into the organs of the developing foetus, including the liver and lungs. Paul Fowler, Professor in Translational Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, said: “We all worried that if nanoparticles were getting into the foetus, then they might be directly affecting its development in the womb. The team also examined 60 mother and newborn pairs and also found black carbon particles in maternal blood, cord blood and placenta.Įxperts said the results were “very worrying”. They found that all already had black carbon particles in their placenta, liver, lung and brain, with the pollution present even by the first trimester.ĭeveloping organs are particularly vulnerable, and the findings could help explain why exposure to pollution during pregnancy is linked to detrimental health effects in children, such as low-birth weight and asthma. Scientists at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and Hasselt University, Belgium studied 14 foetuses which were aborted between weeks seven and 20 of normal progressing pregnancies. Babies have air pollution particles in their lungs even before they take their first breath, researchers have found.Īlthough earlier studies had detected soot particles in the placenta of expectant mothers, it was unknown if the pollution could actually pass through to foetuses. ![]()
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