Physicists say they have found evidence in data from Europe Large Hadron Collider For three sets of quarks never seen before, just as the world’s largest particle smasher begins a new round of high-energy experiments.
The three exotic types of particles—which include two groups of four quarks, known as quarks, as well as a unit of five quarks called a pentaquark—are perfectly compatible with Standard Formthe ancient theory describing the structure of atoms.
By contrast, scientists hope that the current operation of the LHC will show physical evidence beyond the range of Standard Form To explain the nature of mysterious phenomena such as dark matter. This evidence could point to New arrays of subatomic particlesor even Extra dimensions in our world.
LHC has been shut down for three years to modernize its systems to handle unprecedented power levels. This closure ended in AprilSince then, scientists and engineers at the CERN research center on the Franco-Swiss border have been preparing to resume scientific operations today.
CERN’s control center was buzzing as the LHC began its third round of data collection and analysis.
“It’s a magical moment now,” said Fabiola Gianotti, CERN’s general manager. webcasting today. “We have just hit an unprecedented energy, 13.6 TeV, and this opens a new era of exploration at CERN.”
Gianotti said that the LHC scientists expect to collect the most data during this third round they have collected Over the course of 13 years during the two previous collisions. “This of course will increase our chances of discovering or understanding the fundamental laws of the universe,” she said.
The 27-kilometre (approximately 17 miles) ring of superconducting magnets and its particle detectors are set to operate around the clock for about four years during Round 3.
The start of the race today comes 10 years and one day after LHC physicists announced their biggest discovery yet: Evidence for the existence of the Higgs bosona subatomic particle that helps explain the phenomenon of mass.
The three new types of subatomic particles, described today during a CERN . Seminar, not quite discoveries on the Higgs level. But they suggest the LHC is hot on the way to discovering more previously unseen building blocks of the universe.
The Large Hadron Collider smashes together protons at speeds close to the speed of light to study combinations of quarks known as hadrons.
“The more analyzes we do, the more exotic hadrons we find,” Niels Tuning, physics coordinator for the LHCb detector, said. He said in a press release.
“We are experiencing a period of discovery similar to the 1950s, when the discovery of the ‘particle zoo’ of hadrons began and eventually led to the quark model of conventional hadrons in the 1960s. We are making the ‘particle zoo 2.0’.”
LHCb spokesman Chris Parks said studying new groups of quarks “will help theorists to develop a unified model of exotic hadrons, the exact nature of which is largely unknown.”
Most hadrons are not very strange. Protons and neutrons, for example, are made of three quarks bound together. (In fact, The origin of the word “quark”Returns to a line from Wake up Finnegan By James Joyce: “Three quarks for a Muster Mark!”) Pions are combinations of two quarks.
Four quark and five quark groups are very rare, and they are thought to be It only exists for a moment before it decomposes into different types of particles.
Quarks come in six different “flavors”: up and down, up and down, charm and weird.
The LHCb team analyzed the decay of negatively charged B mesons and saw evidence of a pentagram made up of a charm quark and a charm antiquark, as well as an up, down and strange quark. It is the first pentagon known to contain a strange quark.
The newly identified quaternary quarks have a “charge double” group of four quarks: a charm quark, a strange antiquark, an up quark and a down antiquark.
Those tetraquarks have been observed in combination with their neutral counterpart, which has a charm quark, a strange antiquark, an up antiquark, and a down quark. CERN says this is the first time a pair of tetraquarks have been observed together.
Some theoretical models envision exotic hadrons as single units of tightly bound quarks. Others see them as pairs of standard hadrons that are bound together loosely, similar to the way atoms are bound together to form molecules.
“Only time and more studies of exotic hadrons will determine whether these particles are one, the other or both,” CERN says.
This article was originally published by universe today. Read the original article.
