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posted by takyon on Thursday October 04 2018, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the GO-SIGMA-BETA dept.

Atom Smasher Detects Hints of New Unstable Particle

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest atom smasher, just discovered at least two previously unknown particles.

The 17-mile (27 kilometers) underground ring near Geneva recently discovered two baryons and a hint of another particle, according to a statement from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which runs the LHC. Baryons are fundamental subatomic particles that are each made up of three quarks. The quarks, in turn, are even smaller particles that come in different "flavors": up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm.

[...] The first, named Σb(6097)+, is made up of one bottom quark and two up quarks, while the second, named Σb(6097)-, is made up of one bottom quark and two down quarks. [...] As for the third potential particle, the researchers discovered only hints that it exists. Named Z sub c-(4100), this particle could be a weird meson, a type of unstable particle that briefly flits into existence during high-energy collisions and that consists of two quarks and two antiquarks.


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  • (Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday October 04 2018, @06:36PM (2 children)

    by Spamalope (5233) on Thursday October 04 2018, @06:36PM (#744242) Homepage

    The question is does this help answer fundamental questions? Does it lead towards a grand unified theory, or deeper understanding of gravity that could help? (for example) We might not know the answer until we're looking back having figured those things out.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:09PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @11:09PM (#744379)

    No. The only question it answers is "How many billion dollars does it take for a particle physicist to change a lightbulb?"

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:00AM

      by acid andy (1683) on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:00AM (#744990) Homepage Journal

      None. That's a job for the interns / postgrads. The particle physicist will just accelerate the old and new light bulbs up close to the speed of light until they smash together and then write about the little pieces of broken glass in a paper.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?