new particle discovered

[dragon]

Not content with perhaps the biggest scientific discovery of the decade, scientists at the Large Hadron Collide continue to search for new particles—and now they've found one that seems to be an entirely new form of matter.

A series of experiments at the LHC have confirmed that a new particle called Z(4430)—catchy!— actually exists, and it's the best evidence to date of a new form of matter called a tetraquark. Quarks are the subatomic particles that, combined, form all matter. In pairs they form mesons; in triplets, protons and neutrons. Tetraquarks are a hypothesized combination of four of the little things—and Z(4430) was, if it existed, thought to be an example. Thing was, nobody knew for sure—until now—that it existed or not.

Its sighting at the LHC changes things. Researchers from CERN have found as many as 4000 of the particles, which means that those who think tetraquarks do exist are pretty excited. There remains some work to be done to understand once and for all if Z(4430) is with 100 percent certainty a tetraquark, and even then exactly what that means for us. But in the meantime, it's nice to know that the LHC isn't resting on its laurels. [arXiv via New Scientist]

link

[Eternal_Freedom]

Now that's cool.

[Borgholio]

So, a 5th state of matter? That doesn't happen every day....

[SCRawl]

So, a 5th state of matter? That doesn't happen every day....

Not a state of matter -- basically a new particle. Like the article says: two quarks (well, quark + antiquark to be more precise) make a meson, three quarks make a baryon, four quarks make a tetraquark. Still very interesting, if it turns out to be true.

[Borgholio]

Ah, yeah misread that part. Still pretty cool. I wonder how this particle forms in nature...

[Iroscato]

Amazing to think that just a few decades ago, we assumed atoms were the absolutely fundamental building blocks of reality, and nothing could be smaller. The LHC has allowed us to become masters of splitting hairs

[Ahriman238]

Amazing to think that just a few decades ago, we assumed atoms were the absolutely fundamental building blocks of reality, and nothing could be smaller. The LHC has allowed us to become masters of splitting hairs

SDN made us the masters of splitting hairs. Well, for some of us it was college.

This is mastering the building blocks of creation, totally different scale involved.

[Simon_Jester]

Amazing to think that just a few decades ago, we assumed atoms were the absolutely fundamental building blocks of reality, and nothing could be smaller. The LHC has allowed us to become masters of splitting hairs

We knew the quarks were around well before the LHC. It's just that you can't make quartets out of them without hitting them really hard. Round peg-in-square-hole kind of hard.

[mr friendly guy]

Now if they could also discover sparticles. That could potentially change our understanding.

[Borgholio]

I'll admit, when I read the term "sparticle" the first thought in my mind was about a Roman slave who led a massive rebellion against his masters..

[Crossroads Inc.]

Forgive me if this is a stupid questions, but Particles like Muons, Leptons gluons, etc. Those are made of Quarks right?
As far as I know, until SOMEONE Does something with superstrings, Quarks are the fundamental particle size?

[Eternal_Freedom]

As far as I can recall, only baryons are made of quarks. Leptons aren't. Electrons, muons, Taus and neutrinos are all fundamental (at present, ask me again in ten years).

[SCRawl]

As far as I can recall, only baryons are made of quarks. Leptons aren't. Electrons, muons, Taus and neutrinos are all fundamental (at present, ask me again in ten years).

Close. Hadrons are made of quarks, and are further subdivided into baryons and mesons. Baryons are made of three quarks, and mesons are made of a quark-antiquark pair. (I barely remember this from my physics undergraduate days; wikipedia fills in the rest.)

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oh yes, hadrons and mesons. I knew I'd forgotten a category somewhere. No wonder they call it a particle zoo.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I forget who said it, but there was a famous physicist who said something like:
"If I had known there would be so many particles, I would have become a botanists!"

[Simon_Jester]

Actually there are seventeen particles, eight of which are basically fatter, shorter-lived versions of the others. And nine of which have antiparticles (there's overlap). If you can't keep track of seventeen things, you're probably not smart enough to do particle physics.

[It gets a bit confusing when you include all the different ways to assemble quarks, granted]

Forgive me if this is a stupid questions, but Particles like Muons, Leptons gluons, etc. Those are made of Quarks right?
As far as I know, until SOMEONE Does something with superstrings, Quarks are the fundamental particle size?

There are, in an informal sense, four kinds of fundamental particles.

There's the force carriers. There's the things that are made of quarks. There's the things that aren't made of quarks. And there's the weird crap.

...

The prototypical force carrier is the photon- essentially, a packet of energy that is caused by and associated with the interaction forces between two particles. The photon carries the electromagnetic force; wherever charges interact electromagnetically, there you will find a spray of photons associated with the event. Other force carriers include the gluon (strong nuclear force) the W and Z bosons (weak nuclear), and the graviton (gravity, and we haven't actually seen it but fondly hope it exists).

...

The prototypical "things made of quarks" particles are the proton and neutron, which make up basically all stable quark-based matter in the universe and are made of 'up' and 'down' quarks.* There are four other brands of quark, and a wide variety of combo-particles that can be built up out of quarks, including some real screwballs like quark-antiquark pairs (pions).

[each quark has an antiquark, but these are all the same basic type of matter and behave the same way except for the kamikaze exploding particle thing]

*Seriously, all stable matter we encounter and interact with and directly observe by means other than complicated radiation/particle detectors is made of electrons, up quarks, and down quarks. Everything else is either short-lived, a thing that pops into existence as a byproduct of the interactions of other stuff, or nigh-invisible.

...

Now, when I say "not made of quarks" I really mean "leptons." The prototypical lepton is the electron- a low-mass high-charge particle. There are two heavier 'electron-type' leptons: muons that are basically fat, short-lived electrons, and tau (sometimes 'tauon') that are even fatter and shorter-lived.. And there's one type of neutrino associated with each of those three. Those are

[Leptons have antiparticles too, see my comments on quarks]

...

The "weird crap" includes the Higgs boson, which does not carry any of the fundamental forces, though its interaction with those forces has a lot to do with the way mass works. The Higgs definitely exists, and arguably is a "thing not made of quarks," but it's not a lepton so I don't count it that way.

"Weird crap" also (we hope) includes one or more fundamental particles that form the basis of dark matter. In practice the most elegant hypothesis is that this is only one kind of such particle exists, and just happens to be nigh-invisible. As far as I know it's still within the realm of possibility that a whole 'zoo' of dark-matter particles exists a la Schlock Mercenary's dark matter lifeforms, but that violates Occam's Razor hard.

...

So basically, quarks are fundamental particles but not THE ONLY fundamental particles. Up and down quarks are fundamental and building blocks of 99.9% of all visible mass in the universe. Electrons are just as fundamental as quarks, and just as essential to the order of the cosmos as we see it... but are not made out of quarks, and as far as we know aren't made out of anything at all.

Photons and gluons are fundamental too- but exist as a logical consequence of the forces governing interaction between other fundamental particles. They're fundamental in the sense of "have no building blocks," but not quite as fundamental in the philosophical sense.