The LHC Just Discovered A New System of Five Particles

Today, CERN announced an exceptional new discovery that was made by the LHCb, which unveiled five new states all at once.

The team notes that this revelation improves our understanding of quantum theory in general and, most notably, gives us new clues about the earliest moments of our universe.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) collaboration just announced the discovery of a new system of five particles all in a single analysis. Discovering a new state is a feat in itself – but discovering five new states all at once is exceptional. Especially since there’s such an overwhelming level of statistical significance – i.e. this isn’t just a fluke.

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what are they? …

Each of the five particles were found to be excited states of Omega-c-zero, a particle with three quarks. These particle states are named, according to the standard convention, Ωc(3000)0, Ωc(3050)0, Ωc(3066)0, Ωc(3090)0 and Ωc(3119)0.

“The Omega baryons are represented by the symbol Ω and contain no up or down quarks.”

OK, so, the remaining quarks are strange, charm and bottom. The “C” subscript says that these particles contain charm quarks. There’s no “B” subscript so no bottom quarks. So we’re looking at strange+strange+charm? Check web. Yes, I got it right, pats self on back.

The ground state of the Ωc0 has a mass of 2700 MeV, a little below that of the new particles.

mollwollfumble said:

what are they? …

Each of the five particles were found to be excited states of Omega-c-zero, a particle with three quarks. These particle states are named, according to the standard convention, Ωc(3000)0, Ωc(3050)0, Ωc(3066)0, Ωc(3090)0 and Ωc(3119)0.

“The Omega baryons are represented by the symbol Ω and contain no up or down quarks.”

OK, so, the remaining quarks are strange, charm and bottom. The “C” subscript says that these particles contain charm quarks. There’s no “B” subscript so no bottom quarks. So we’re looking at strange+strange+charm? Check web. Yes, I got it right, pats self on back.

The ground state of the Ωc0 has a mass of 2700 MeV, a little below that of the new particles.

How does that (chramed omega) compare with the mass of other subatomic particles?
Proton 938 MeV
Lambda 1115
Sigma 1189
Xi 1314
Charmed Sigma 2454
New particles
Bottom Sigma 5811
W boson 80400
Z boson 91200
Higgs 125300

I suppose the mass is much as expected, extremely high for a charmed baryon but not nearly as high as a bottomed baryon.

Of the baryons listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_baryons , only about half have been found even in their ground states. On top of that are all the excited states.