Potential New Particle Shows Up at the LHC, Thrilling and Confounding Physicists

Scientific American ^ | December 16, 2015 | Clara Moskowitz

[2ndDivisionVet]

The gigantic accelerator in Europe has produced hints of an exotic particle that defies the known laws of physics.

A little wiggle on a graph, representing just a handful of particles, has set the world of physics abuzz. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, the largest particle accelerator on Earth, reported yesterday that their machine might have produced a brand new particle not included in the established laws of particle physics known as the Standard Model. Their results, based on the data collected from April to November after the LHC began colliding protons at nearly twice the energy of its previous runs, are too inconclusive to be sure—many physicists warned that the wiggle could just as easily represent a statistical fluke. Nevertheless, the finding has already spawned at least 10 new papers in less than a day proposing a theoretical explanation for the particle, and has the halls and blackboards of physics departments around the world churning....

[o_1_2_3__]

How does a “potential” particle “show up”?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

[Steely Tom]

I’m waiting for them to discover evidence of time reversal.

If I’m not mistaken, there is already some tentative evidence of that, arising from neutrino research.

I believe that - if it is possible at all - time reversal and time travel will first be observed at the level of subatomic particles.

[gorush]

[Kirkwood]

It will be called the Sheldon.

[Paladin2]

Crash to airplanes into each other at high speed and you’ll find new particles too.

[Slyfox]

Louis Pasteur, when he was fooling with bacteria, noticed that there must be something smaller than bacteria. Later, viruses were discovered when improved microscopes could see them.

[Paladin2]

Crash two airplanes into each other at high speed and you’ll find new particles too.

[Buttons12]

Wouldn't it be funny if what they were doing caused a new type of particle to come into being? I.e., they actually created it?

[Steely Tom]

Crash to airplanes into each other at high speed and you’ll find new particles too.

That's true, but the "new particles" will just be rearrangements of the original atoms that made up the airplane. Not one single atom of the airplane will be destroyed, and not one single new atom will be created.

In the case of the particles created by the LHC, the protons and neutrons of atoms are being ripped apart into the quarks that comprise them, and these are then reassembling in new ways, ways that (in some cases) are so unstable they only exist for an interval of time that's less than the amount of time it takes for light to cross the diameter of a proton.

[Oceander]

Very interesting. If true it would be something new under the sun for physics theory. Later in the article it says that to-date no theory paper has predicted this particle.

---

If the LHC truly has seen a new particle, however, the question looming large is: What is it? From its signature at the LHC, the particle must weigh roughly 750 giga-electron volts (GeV), around 750 times the mass of the proton, and would fall into the class of bosons, meaning its spin has an integer value. Some theorists say the newcomer looks like a heavier cousin of the Higgs boson, which similarly first showed up at the LHC as a highly intriguing blip in the data about four years ago. Or it could be a kind of portal particle into the dark matter sector—because this particle decays almost immediately, on its own it cannot account for the invisible matter that seems to be ubiquitous in space, but it may be a messenger that communicates with the dark matter particle, theorists suggested. Another hypothetical alternative is that it is a graviton, the predicted carrier particle for the force of gravity.

---

[IronJack]

What do you mean by “time reversal?”

[tacticalogic]

After the “faster than light neutrino” debacle, I’ll wait until they reproduce and verify the results.

[tacticalogic]

After the “faster than light neutrino” debacle, I’ll wait until they reproduce and verify the results.

[Steely Tom]

What do you mean by “time reversal?”

Evidence of reversal of the arrow of time.

Evidence of an effect occurring before its cause.

I'm not saying it's true, or that it will be discovered.

I'm just saying that if it is ever discovered, it will first be seen in some phenomenon that occurs at the level of interactions of subatomic particles and the forces that mediate their interactions.

[SgtHooper]

Somebody screwed up the grounding or shielding. But should be worth more government grants or funding.

[Norm Lenhart]

Someone found Romney’s Severe Conservatism?

That IS amazing!

[IronJack]

I agree with you that if it ever happens, it will be in some obscure mathematical circumstance that only a physicist would understand. But I cannot fathom it ever manifesting in the “time travel” types of scenarios common in science fiction. It is simply not possible to unshatter a glass.

[Stentor]

How does a “potential” particle “show up”?

Have any freeloading relatives?