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The newly-discovered particles, named Σb(6097)+ and Σb(6097)-, are predicted by the quark model, and belong to the same family of particles as the protons that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerates and collides: baryons, which are made up of three quarks. But the type of quarks they contain are different: whereas protons contain two up quarks and one down quark, the new particles are bottom baryons composed of one bottom quark and two up quarks or one bottom quark and two down quarks respectively.The LHCb researchers found these particles using the classic particle-hunting technique of looking for an excess of...

Initial results from high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider offer first glimpse of physics at new energy frontier.In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions. This week, team led by researchers from MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary, completed work on the first scientific paper analyzing the results of those collisions. Its findings show that the collisions produced an unexpectedly high number of particles called mesons — a factor that will have to be taken into account...

Report hints at the existence of a new and massive elementary particle In a weak moment, researchers have found an unexpected asymmetry in particle production that could hint at exotic physics. The tentative evidence, announced August 21, could be the fingerprint of a massive elementary particle that would help unify three of the four known forces in nature. The physicists collected data for nearly a decade at the Belle particle accelerator experiment in Tsukuba, Japan. In the experiment, known as a B factory, beams of electrons and positrons collide to produce millions of pairs of B mesons and anti-B mesons....

OAKLAND, Calif., Jan. 13 — At least three advanced diagnostic tests suggest that an experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has cracked open protons and neutrons like subatomic eggs to create a primordial form of matter that last existed when the universe was roughly one-millionth of a second old, scientists said here on Tuesday. The hot, dense substance, called a quark-gluon plasma, has managed to generate intense disputes in the 15 years or so in which scientists have pursued it. In 2000, a major European laboratory claimed that it had, for the first time, liberated particles called quarks from where...