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Message: <blockquote data-quote="freyar" data-source="post: 6664931" data-attributes="member: 40227">Yup, like MechaPilot says, trying to answer questions and find out how the world works is what science does.  In this case, QCD -- the theory of the strong nuclear force -- is a very difficult theory to understand and calculate with, so it's really critical to get both the confirmation of a long-standing qualitative prediction (5-quark state) and some quantitative data (masses, etc) from the experiments.  I don't specialize in this area, but I'm sure it will help refine calculations.We don't know!  That's the great part.  What we can be pretty sure of is that, if we were able to look at small enough distances, the nature of matter would look very different than standard particle physics.  Of course, this particular result isn't about finding smaller components of stuff but rather finding new ways those components can fit together.Well, others have already mentioned that we can't necessarily know yet if this is useful directly or even how it might affect our understanding of esoteric things like neutron stars.  But that's not the entire point.  Trying to understand the universe is a part of humanity, and you can see the desire to make sense of the world even in ancient history.  We'd lose something of who we are if we didn't do this.  Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate, once wrote, "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."  I find that really appropriate.That's a very nice gift idea!</blockquote>

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