Scientists detect “strange” particles – 06/07/2022 – Science

Scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered three never-before-seen subatomic particles as they work to unlock the building blocks of the universe. European Center for Nuclear Research CERN this Tuesday.

The 27-kilometre LHC at CERN is the machine that found the Higgs boson, which along with its energy field is vital to the formation of the universe after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

Now, CERN scientists say they have observed a new type of “pentaquark” and the first pair of “tetraquarks,” adding three members to the list of new hadrons found at the LHC. They will help physicists better understand how quarks clump together into composite particles.

Quarks are elementary particles that usually combine in binary and triple groups to form hadrons, such as the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei.

However, they can also rarely combine into particles of four and five quarks or quarks and pentagons.

“The more analyzes we do, the more exotic hadrons we find,” physicist Niels Tunning said in a statement.

“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 in the process of creating a ‘particle zoo 2.0,'” he added.