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The scientific world has still lots of discoveries ahead to comprehend the complexity of our universe. Scientists at CERN have recently managed to find a missing piece of the puzzle. While they were using the largest atom smasher in the world, they bumped into a new charming subatomic particle. This type of heavy particle might offer valuable insights into the mysteries that keep matter together.
The New Heavy Particle Has Two Charms and One Light Quark
On Thursday, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe announced a groundbreaking discovery in the field of science. So far, people talked about the existence of such a presence only in terms of theory with no evidence to support their claims. However, recent research might have just proved them right.
The new heavy particle was dubbed as Xi-cc++ might explain how the smallest constituents of protons and electrons known as quarks which are interacting with each other. There are two types of quarks: up and down. One up quark and two down quarks make a neutron while a proton has one down and two up quarks. These groups of three elements are known as baryons.
There are other types of quarks such as charm, strange, bottom, and top. In their turn, these constitute other types of baryons. However, the world’s largest atom smasher has just proved the existence of another kind of heavy particle, known as Xi cc. This element consists of two heavy quarks called charms and a light one. The peculiarity here is that there is no baryon in nature with more than one heavy quark.
Scientists Can Now Receive More Insights into the Forces that Keep Matter Together
Oxford physicist Guy Wilkinson is one of the authors of this paper. He claimed that there were many scientists before this project that searched for such a particle. Moreover, he is confident that this discovery will establish a new group of baryons. Scientists need to find new such proofs and study their similarities and differences. This way, people will be closer to learning the force that drives particles to stay together and interact with each other.
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