On July 6th 2017, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva Switzerland, announced that they have discovered a new particle. The new particle is a baryon. This particular particle is called the Xi-cc++, and has four times the mass of its fellow baryon, the proton. The researchers say that the new particle is predicted by the standard model and may help them understand quantum chromodynamics and the strong forces.
Baryons, such as protons and neutrons are composed of what are known as quarks. There are six types of quarks, up, down, top, bottom, and strange, charmed. Each baryon is composed of three quarks, two up and a down which makes up a proton, and one up and two down which makes up a neutron. The Xi-cc++ is being called a doubly charmed particle because it contains two charmed quarks which are heavy.
The researchers say that they have created charmed quarks in pairs before, but until now have never witnessed a particle in nature that actually possessed them, and say that this is very rare.
No comments:
Post a Comment