GENEVA –
The physics laboratory, which is home to the world’s largest atom smasher, announced Tuesday the observation of three new “exotic particles” that could provide clues about the force that binds subatomic particles together.
The observation of a new type of pentaquark and the first tetraquark duo at CERN, the Geneva area home of the Large Hadron Collider, offers a new angle for evaluating the “strong force” that holds the nuclei of atoms together.
Most exotic hadrons, which are subatomic particles, are made up of two or three elementary particles known as quarks. The strong force is one of the four known forces in the universe, along with the “weak force” – which applies to the decay of particles – as well as the electromagnetic force and gravity.
The announcement comes amid a flurry of activity this week at CERN: Also on Tuesday, the LHC’s underground ring of superconducting magnets, which propel infinitesimal particles along a 27-kilometer (about 17-mile) chain and at near-light speeds, resumed smashes them together. Collision data is captured by high-tech detectors along the ring road.
The so-called “Run 3” of collisions, ending a three-year hiatus for maintenance and other checks, is operating at an unprecedented energy of 13.6 trillion electron volts, which will offer the prospect of new discoveries in particle physics.
CERN scientists have hailed a smooth start to what is expected to be nearly four years of work in “Run 3” – the third time the LHC has carried out collisions since its debut in 2008.
A day earlier, CERN marked the 10th anniversary of the confirmation of the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle that is central to the so-called Standard Model, which explains the fundamentals of particle physics.
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