The physics lab that hosts the world’s largest atomic breaker has announced the observation of three new “exotic particles” never seen before, which could provide clues as to the force that binds subatomic particles together.
The research collaboration, called the Large Hadron Collider (LHCb) experiment, located at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, has observed a new type of “pentaquark” and the first duet of “tetraquarks”.
Quarks are elementary particles, which CERN explains usually combine into groups of two and three to form hadrons such as protons and neutrons that form atomic nuclei. More rarely, however, they can also be combined into particles of four and five quarks, or “tetraquarks” and “pentaquarks.”
The announcement comes amid a flurry of activities this week at CERN, as scientists resumed particle crushing in what is expected to be nearly four years of operation in “Run 3” for the third time. that the LHC has been conducting collisions since its debut in 2008..
The so-called “Run 3” puts an end to a three-year hiatus for maintenance and other controls, and runs on an unprecedented 13.6 trillion electron volts, which will offer the prospect of new discoveries in particle physics.
Earlier this week, CERN celebrated the 10th anniversary of the confirmation of the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle that occupies a central place in the so-called Standard Model that explains the fundamentals of particle physics.