Scientists believe they may have stumbled onto the first quad-quark particle

Jun 18, 2013 17:41 GMT  ·  By
The Belle experiment at the Japanese High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation, one of the colliders used to discover the new particle
   The Belle experiment at the Japanese High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation, one of the colliders used to discover the new particle

Two teams from two different particle accelerators, one in China and one in Japan, have independently discovered a new particle that may be an entirely new form of matter, not known to science until now.

The researchers were actually studying another mysterious particle, Y(4260), but they noticed a strong bump in their data at around 3.9 gigaelectronvolts. Further study has led them to believe that this is a new particle, which they've labeled Zc(3900).

Extensive testing has led them to conclude that the particle is real. The mystery is what it is made up of. Scientists are fairly certain that the particle has an electric charge and that it's made up of one charm quark and one anti-charm quark.

But the teams suspect the particle also contains an up and an anti-down quark as well. If that is true, it would be the first time a particle made up of four quarks is discovered. Particles like these have been theorized, but never observed.

Quarks are the building blocks of hadrons, things like protons and neutrons. They can't be directly observed independently and always come either in a pair, of quarks and antiquarks, or in a trio, like in protons.

It's not clear whether the new particle is made up of four quarks, as there are other possible explanations for its mass and behavior.

For example, the particle may be made up of two pairs of quarks that are very closely linked together, forming a sort of hadron molecule, which has also been posited to exist but never actually seen.

Finally, there's also the possibility that scientists are seeing two pairs of quarks interacting strongly, but not really bound together.

Further study is needed to say for sure, but what's clear is that there's a lot more to discover in the particle world and that you don't need the Large Hadron Collider to do it.