Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Switzerland say that have found 3 brand new exotic particles in what is a major breakthrough for modern physics.
The particles, made up of quarks, are seen in never before two four-quark combinations, known as tetraquarks, and a five-quark unit called a pentaquark. Scientists have said that the particles fit in perfectly with the existing standard model of physics.
CERN made the discoveries 3 years after the 17-mile-long site was shut-down to increase its power capacity. The new work has been said to have generated as much new data as the previous 13 years of work preceding it, and it is hoped that as the new work progresses new discoveries will be made that do not align with the standard model, relating to such things as dark matter and dark energy.
CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti said of the work:
"It's a magic moment now. We just had collisions at an unprecedented energy, 13.6 tera-electronvolts, and this opens a new era of exploration at CERN. This, of course, will increase our opportunities for discovery or for understanding the fundamental laws of the Universe."
Niels Tuning, physics coordinator for the collider's LHCb detector, added:
"The more analyses we perform, the more kinds of exotic hadrons we find. We're witnessing a period of discovery similar to the 1950s, when a 'Particle Zoo' of hadrons started being discovered and ultimately led to the quark model of conventional hadrons in the 1960s. We're creating 'Particle Zoo 2.0'."
The LHC works by shooting particles around a 17-mile-long piece of equipment and smashing the particles together in order to detect smaller particles and see how they behave. The amount of energy required is phenomenal and it is among the most advanced pieces of scientific equipment humankind has ever created.
The previous most influential discovery made by the LHC was the elementary particle the Higgs Boson, which until that point in time had been purely theoretical. Peter Higgs, the physicist who predicted the existence of the particle, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics following the discovery made by CERN.
[Based on reporting by: science alert]
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