Science & Technology

Large Hadron Collider discovers new particles

By T.K. Randall
March 20, 2017

Image: CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Tunnel
Credit: Julian Herzog / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) 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

Tags: Large Hadron Collider