The largest atom crusher of the world has made a discovery that has taken half a century to happen.
The researchers of European Organization for Nuclear Research, more commonly known as CERN, has declared the detection of a new type of subatomic particle that is called the pentaquark, which basically means that they have just made the discovery of a new form of matter.
The findings of this new discovery have been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters.
In the 1960s, the pentaquark has first been forecasted although actually detecting the particle has evaded the scientists for decades now. The term quark is used for the building blocks which compose hadrons and the best known hadrons are protons and neutrons.
Hadrons with just 2 or 3 quarks had been known to exist before the scientists discovered the five quarks which are hurdled together in a hadron. Scientists had also been unaware of the evidence of some subatomic particles that are made of four quarks.
Eric Swanson, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pittsburgh said, “Every particle we’re aware of, except for a few oddballs, is made up of quark and anti-quark, or three quarks. That’s what builds up the mass of the universe, what makes you and me and the Earth and the sun. This, if verified, should be the beginning of a whole new form of matter.”
After undergoing two years of maintenance, the Large Hadron Collider that rests deep under the Swiss and French border has revived back in order in April.
In 2012, it was very successful in solving one of the universe’s mysteries when the LHC discovered the experimental evidence for Higgs boson particle, which is believed to explain how other particles get their mass.
Peter Higgs and Francois Englert has won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics for the finding.
