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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...

The US particle collider Tevatron has jumped in just ahead of the Large Hadron Collider's results announcement this week to say that their machine has found the "strongest indication to date" of the God particle. The LHC's baby American cousin stopped bashing particles off each other back in March 2001 but the scientists have kept crunching the numbers from the 500 trillion collisions produced to wring the last drops of data out. Today, the boffins said their data "strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson" but we're still not there yet. “It is a real cliffhanger," the DZero...

GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher has recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the creation of the universe billions of years ago, which many theorize occurred as a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The collisions occurred Tuesday evening as the Large Haldron Collider underwent test runs in preparation for operations next year, said Christine Sutton of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. Two beams of circulating particles traveling in opposite directions at 1.18...

For anyone not initially aware, The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a particle accelerator located along the French/Swiss Border, being the Largest Man-made machine ever (also the most expensive), it's biggest item for debate has been it's potential risk (even with a low liklihood for such events, catastrophic risk is still there). The risk to Put it mildly ranges anywhere from Miniature Black Hole creation(which broken down comes down to the verity of Hawking Radiation, and estimated accretion rates, both based purely from theory), The creation of matter destroying strange matter with a positive charge, or a myriad of other...

That black hole that was going to eat the Earth? Forget about it, and keep making the mortgage payments — those of you who still have them. A new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider scheduled to go into operation this fall outside Geneva, is no threat to the Earth or the universe, according to a new safety review approved Friday by the governing council of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or Cern, which is building the collider. “There is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be...

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice. None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe. Scientists say that...

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice. None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe. Scientists say that...

"The builders of the world's biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet."