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Science & Technology

Large Hadron Collider discovers new particles

By T.K. Randall
March 20, 2017 · Comment icon 13 comments

The LHC has made another discovery. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Maximilien Brice
CERN's giant atom smasher has identified five new particles that had been 'hiding in plain sight'.
Not content with finding the long-sought Higgs boson, the scientists behind the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva have been continuing their efforts to unravel the secrets of the universe by pushing the world-famous particle accelerator to increasingly high levels of energy and intensity.

Now the team working on the LHCb experiment, which aims to explore what took place immediately after the Big Bang, has announced the discovery of not one, but five new particles.
"These particles have been hiding in plain sight for years, but it's taken the exquisite sensitivity of LHCb's particle detectors to bring them to our attention," said Professor Tara Shears.

The new particles are all baryons, a type of subatomic particle comprised of three quarks.

While the find is not quite as groundbreaking as the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, the scientists believe that there is much these particles can teach us about the subatomic world.

Source: BT.com | Comments (13)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #4 Posted by Twin 7 years ago
Quarks to the left of me, quasars to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
Comment icon #5 Posted by Frank Merton 7 years ago
I read about this from several sources, but no one mentions any significance beyond the simple fact of their existence.  Does it prove or disprove some conjecture about the behavior of quarks?  Was their presence predicted?  Does it imply some hitherto unknown physics?  Is it, as I suspect, just news to tell us the Hadron people are busy.  
Comment icon #6 Posted by MWoo7 7 years ago
Right On my man FRANK ! "Does it prove or disprove some conjecture about the behavior of quarks?  ...  Is it, as I suspect, just news to tell us the Hadron people are busy."  Mmmm maybe they'll elaborate in a few weeks, hopefully still not holding hard to string theory fun. Anyone read up on all the different particles? HOLY! think my head about burst! Excellent re: below ::::: Yeah when it first started out, I would assume everyone kind of had that thought in the back of their head, but probably didn't expect the can of worms they now have HA!
Comment icon #7 Posted by quiXilver 7 years ago
It seems to me, given the nature of the universe and our perception. No matter how deeply we look either within, or without, we will perceive something.
Comment icon #8 Posted by fred_mc 7 years ago
I'm also missing more elaboration on the finding. I would for example like to know if the find was expected according to known physics or not.
Comment icon #9 Posted by paperdyer 7 years ago
Regardless of the "importance"  it's still an amazing discovery.  Maybe it's just the SciFi freak in me, but the more CERN does the closer I feel we're getting to a boom! BIG or small.  Hopefully not a BANG!
Comment icon #10 Posted by quiXilver 7 years ago
well... when the frequencies we use for radio broadcasting were discovered, we didn't know the ramifications and potential uses of them at the time. Discovery is for discovery... the uses of those discoveries... I'm sure some clever capitalists will jump in and find a way to profit from it soon enough.
Comment icon #11 Posted by pallidin 7 years ago
Good deal. Hoping for further findings from this awesome physics machine.
Comment icon #12 Posted by Sundew 7 years ago
RIP Gerry Rafferty.     
Comment icon #13 Posted by sepulchrave 7 years ago
These particles seem to be higher-energy excitations of an already known particle, formed from one charm and two strange quarks. In high-energy physics, different excitation levels of particles are often treated as new particles (for valid technical reasons). I think (not an expert, but somewhat knowledgeable) that the importance of this find is that knowing the energy levels of these charmed/strange particles helps quantify the strong force interaction between charm quarks. This has bearing on possible grand unified theories. So: The sub-atomic particles just discovered are definitely compose... [More]


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