A bestiary of exotic hadrons

“All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” -Ernest Rutherford

Is this stamp collecting? Do these exotic hadrons mean anything?

>Do these exotic hadrons mean anything?

Given their horribly short lifespans, probably not much other than the fact that they manage to exist for however short a time might vindicate QFT a tad more (I'm assuming that QFT somewhat predicts their likelihood to show up).

Or maybe they'll bring a deeper understanding of the strong force.

But generally speaking, I feel you: lots of work and energy spent to create these exotic things, but that may or may not have an actual use or even meaning.

A lot of science is like this these days, it looks like we're hitting exponentially diminishing returns (as in: useful applications) in some areas of science.

That quote isn't real; it was a metaphor Rutherford purportedly once used, posthumously recalled by John Bernal. It was incorrectly converted into a direct quotation by later writers. But even then, you're misunderstanding the quote, by which is meant that physics has supremacy and all other sciences are collecting specific instances of physics; the LHC is decidedly doing physics.

However, even if you take the quote to mean what you imagined, it is unnecessarily cynical. LHC has advanced our understanding of physics.

Learning about the properties of exotic hadrons clarifies our understanding of nuclear forces.

Might be useful someday:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtotechnology