University of Melbourne physicists have helped discover a new state of matter that may shed light on the fabric of the universe.The University team of 14 is part of a group of 300 physicists from 13 countries known as the ‘Belle collaboration’. They have discovered a sub-atomic particle that they are having difficulty explaining and difficulty fitting with any current theory that attempts to describe matter. Their research will be published in Physical Review Letters (in press). “It could mean some of the standard and accepted theories on matter will need to be modified to incorporate some new physics,” says University of Melbourne doctoral student in physics and Belle team member, Mr Craig Everton. The sub-atomic particle they believe could be a meson. A meson by itself is a relatively obscure particle, but one which is made up of quarks, the basic building blocks of not just life, but everything that exists in this universe – as we know it. This ‘mystery meson’ weighs about the same as a single atom of helium (a heavy-weight by sub-atomic particle standards) and exists for only about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before it decays to other longer-lived, more familiar particles.

“This may seem extremely short-lived by any human standard, but it is nearly an eternity for a sub-atomic particle this heavy,” says Everton. The team discovered their meson, technically known as X(3872), using a giant electron collider, or the High Energy Accelerator Research organisation (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan.


View: Full Article | Source: University of Melbourne